“Good,” I say.
Thunder passes over his face like a storm cloud. “Did you do me to get the job?”
I search his face, weighing my response.
“Yeah,” I lie and shrug.
The little boy leaks away. It's devastating to see him go and also a relief.
I can't keep a man. They're untrustworthy and good for only one thing. Thorn was very good at that one thing.
Very.
My mouth waters just thinking about it.
I hadn't done him to get the job. Work hadn't even been on my mind. I'm not ready to inspect what had been in my head too closely.
Introspection is for people who want to improve through self-analysis.
I just want to survive.
I’m a bird with a broken wing. When I heal up, I'll fly away.
Emotions cross Thorn's face until he settles on one: indifference.
I steel my heart. It's better this way.
“Come here,” he says, cupping his hand at me.
I sway over to him, my high heels well-used.
We stare at each other for the space of a few breaths.
He looks from my head down to my toes.
“You're a beautiful woman, Simone.”
A crack begins in the glass of my heart.
He tugs me into his body. I don't resist, but I don't help either.
One large hand covers my ass, and my leg rises to his hip. His palm slides from my butt cheek to the inside of my knee, and he jerks me closer.
I gasp. I wasn’t expecting that, and my head tips back from the sudden motion. Thorn captures it with his other hand, and his lips land on mine.
They're as soft as mine were hard on his before. He moves over each centimeter of my plump lips, swollen from the passionate kisses he leveled on me earlier.
His mouth moves to my throat as his hand slides from my hair to mid-back. His other hand lets go of my leg and cups my sex hard, tramping down on my clit.
It throbs, begging for more.
He suddenly releases me.
I stumble back, unguarded and aroused. I feel warm from the love of his hands and mouth on my body.
He smiles, and it's cruel.
“I don't fuck the help.”
It's like a physical blow. I clamp down on my expression. The effort is ugly; the ice of his words fills my veins.
I lift a shoulder in a parody of the lack of care he just demonstrated. “Whatever.”
He stares at me for a pregnant moment and nods before scrubbing his face. Thorn can't hide his frustration, and I smile.
I’m still winning.
He's too volatile to pretend as well as I can. Not enough practice.
“Fine.” Thorn tears his gaze away from my body.
I stroll to the door, my heart beating so hard I can barely hear my heels click. I slide the bolt and hold the door open.
I turn, and he's right there.
He moved right behind me, and I let my guard down.
I flinch back. Stupid, Simone.
Thorn gives me a thoughtful look and runs a finger along my jaw then down my throat. His fingers spread over my chest. I feel every fingertip like a small flame.
“I won't hurt ya.”
I nod. I can't trust myself to speak, but I already know he’s right. I'm pissed by how fast I turn dumb when he's around. It's like my IQ falls to double digits in Thorn’s presence.
He steps away. “Show up tomorrow at seven. I think I can get Kiki to swing by and show you the ropes.”
I smile though I feel like crying. It's a such a surreal feeling I need to take a deep breath to steady myself.
His eyes are sharp on my face, and I cast mine away.
“You mean poles,” I answer and look back at him.
“Yeah.”
He stands still, filling my open doorway. He's such a large guy, his shoulders almost touch both sides of the door jamb.
An erotic image of him driving against me as I hang on for dear life springs up in my skull.
Thorn gives a slow blink, studying my face. “Fuck it,” he growls and jerks me to him.
His tongue stabs my mouth, and I moan in husky response. I don't even try for silence. It's as if he knows every sensual button to press. As though I sent him a list before we met, and he's going through it from top to bottom.
Thorn pushes me up against the wall by my throat, torturing my mouth, and I begin to lose my breath.
I don't ask him to stop. His hips press into my center, and I feel his cock split me.
I give a little desperate gasp. Begging for air.
Begging for more of the same.
Thorn lets me go and stares at me for one second.
His fists rise, and I feel my eyes widen before his hands pound the wall on either side of my face.
“You make me crazy,” he says with soft menace.
I stand there mute and definitely dumb.
Thorn pivots, stalking away. He latches onto the doorknob as he moves through the threshold, closing the door.
The click is loud in the stillness of my apartment
My heart races as I look at the closed door. Shaky fingers whisper over the lips he just kissed.
I jump when the upper door slams.
Only after a full minute ticks by do I realize his last words weren’t uttered in English.
My lips part in surprise.
French.
SEVEN
Thorn
I get the fuck out of that apartment before I do or say something that'll do in my Thorn goal: Never, under any circumstance, let a fucking woman own me.
I can't count how many one-night stands I've had. Dozens upon dozens.
Simone wasn't a one-night stand or part of any plan.
She's a tornado. I got in her path, and she swept me up.
I slam out of her trashy apartment, leap up the short flight of stairs and burst out of the complex door. I suck in a lungful of shitty Seattle air like a drowning man.
I can't suspend my relief to be outta there; it washes over me in a cleansing sheet of rain.
I look around, paying attention to the neighborhood for the first time. It's up the viaduct's ass. Bad hood.
I glance over my shoulder at the door I just came through.
I wrap my palm around the handle and try to tear it open.
Locked. I jiggle it, and it holds.
Okay, Simone has two doors she's safe behind.
My hand drops from the handle. So why in the blue fuck does it bug me?
Because it makes me anxious as hell to have her unprotected.
I gotta get out of here.
My hands get crammed in my jean pockets as I stride down the littered sidewalk. I don’t look left or right, but I’m keenly aware of surreptitious movement around me. No jag is going to get a piece of Thorn.
A chunk of it is already missing, courtesy of Simone Balland. I'll be Swiss cheese if I keep this up.
*
“Maybe he doesn't want to be found, Thorn,” Kiki says logically, her dark eyebrows arching.
She makes sense, but that prick is responsible for some of the horror I can't shake.
He tried to fuck up my mom.
She's worm bait now, and he's a part of that. Rex didn't slide the needle in her vein, but he made her a prisoner. Dependent.
I escaped the hood, and in killing one of two serial killers responsible for Rose McKenna's death, I'd been falsely imprisoned at barely eighteen.
A grim smile pulls at the corners of my mouth. No one had gotten a piece of Thorn then either. Prison had been child's play compared to my childhood.
When Tag and the other boys in blue figured out the truth, setting McKenna up to exonerate me, it was with an eye toward using me. That was the first time in my shitty life someone aside from Mick had placed trust at my feet.
I allowed the exploitation.
It enabled me to become who I wanted to be. Now I’m Thorn, not some statistic where people see a bla
ck man and assume the worse. I know what I am. I'm from a crap area, a tough street with tougher people, but I'm more than a number.
Kiki snaps her fingers in my face.
I wake up from my thoughts as if I'm dreaming.
“Quit it, Kik.”
She shakes her head, hoops twinkling and spiral curls bouncing. “Nuh-uh.”
I smile. No one could easily categorize her either. I know her mom's black. I've caught a glimpse of her; she’s dark like me. Kiki looks like a sister... but nah, she's got some white in her. Or Euro.
Euro makes me think of Simone, of course.
Now she has some interesting genetics. I want to know more. I don't need to know more.
“Listen.” I turn to Kiki and she folds her arms over her tits. Somehow. They're double Ds.
Thorn knows tits.
I love tits. I remember Simone's in the palms of my hands.
“God, are you, like, here? You okay?” Kiki asks. Not out of concern but of the pissed off at you, not listening variety.
“I'm okay, just distracted.”
Kiki’s eyes chase the dial of her jumbo white wristwatch. “Well, ya better get undistracted because Simone will be here any damn second.”
I know. It's driving me nuts.
“I'm trying to pool our resources,” she says. “Haven't you tried to find out…” She lowers her voice to a whisper. “I mean, you're an undercover cop. Don't you have ways?”
I laugh, folding my arms and leaning my butt against the desk. “It doesn't work like that, Kiki.” I scrub a hand over my short hair. The curl is coarse, springing back under my fingers.
She blows a chunk of hair out of her face and puts her hands on her hips. “Well, how does it work, Thorn?”
I roll my eyes, asking for heavenly intervention. When I look back at Kiki, she's still waiting. “Tag's in charge of that. He's at the shop, gets his tech dick hard with all the crap.”
I see Kiki make the connection, her face lighting up. “That's how you got to Simone!”
I wince.
“Caught you red-handed, pal.”
True.
“So just have Tag put the name Rex in the system. You know how to describe people...”
“I was eight.”
Kiki hesitates then shrugs. “Rex isn't a real popular name. You think this pudwacker was a big deal?”
I nod. “Yeah, without getting into the details—he wanted anonymity.”
“What deets?”
I look at her, and in that moment, my soul's bare.
My eyes move to my feet, crossed at the ankle. They travel to the tats that cover the scars.
“Grew up in Yesler.”
“Me too,” Kiki says.
My head snaps up. “I thought you were a lawyer?”
She chuckles, rolling her eyes. They look like bitter chocolate. “Is this like when they say, ‘If she just lost weight, she'd be pretty?’ Or”—she puts up a finger—“my fave, ‘You're pretty for a black girl.’” Her eyes narrow at me.
Christ, I didn't think about any of that. Do people really say lame shit like that? Goddamned women peel the onion so thin you can see through the skin.
“Fuck, Kiki, no!” I stand, my irritation level through the roof. Probably from no sleep and my dick trying to find a particular pussy. It's like a damn honing device gone spastic. I can't think, and I've suddenly ‘tarded out.
I give a rough exhale. “I'm black too, if ya hadn't noticed. Ya got just enough junk in the trunk to satisfy, for fuck's sake!” I stab my hands in the air. “I was just saying if you lived in that hood—damn, girl.”
Our eyes meet. Understanding flows between us.
“Yeah,” she says softly. A fat tear brims and spills over onto skin that's a light espresso with cream.
She's beautiful.
Kiki isn't black to me—or half-white or whatever the fuck else she is. She's a woman.
I'm a man.
I hate the categories that're made up by other humans who can't stand being in their own skin. Their discomfort with who they are doesn't mean jack to me.
“So... drugs?” I ask.
“Yeah.”
“Prostitution?”
Kiki stares at me, giving a single nod.
“You or your mom?”
Horror washes over her expression like water on glass. Her face falls into her open hands.
I take her by the shoulders. They round into my palms, and I grip tightly.
“Thorn's here, Kik.”
She sinks against me, and I hold her as she cries. For the both of us.
Finally she moves away and dabs her eyes on her sleeve.
I cock an eyebrow.
She inhales sharply, letting the breath out in a mournful exhale. “Mom.”
She went to my mom's funeral. She knows why Tasha died.
“Mine too,” I reply quietly, giving her more than I have to any human being. Mick knows. He was around for part of the fun. Aside from him, it's my bullshit and I own it.
I study her face, the big puppy dog eyes, dark hair, and light mocha skin. “Your dad?”
I know damn well I don't have the right to ask, but we're from the same neighborhood. We've both done okay. More than fucking okay. Somehow.
Kiki shrugs, letting the sadness dry up. “My mom's still blasted all the time. She doesn't know... who he was.” I could slice her shame with a knife. She looks into my face. “I hid when the men were there.”
It sounds random.
I know it's not.
I jam my hands into the front pockets of my slacks and rock back on my heels.
I blow out air. “Did they find you?”
Her stare is my prisoner. I can't look away; neither can she.
She doesn't answer.
My head dips. “Me too.” My voice doesn't sound like my own.
I told her something no one knows. Not even the mandatory cop shrink.
I breathe evenly, feeling the sweat on my palms. My heart stutters in a chest grown cold with anxiety poised to engulf me.
Fuck me, I'm losing it.
My fingers tingle. A fine tremble comes over my body.
“Thorn,” Kiki says.
My head feels hot.
“Thorn!” Kiki’s voice comes from a distance.
My chin lifts, and there she is. I never felt her hands.
She's got a manic grip.
Her eyes search mine. “I'm here, Thorn.”
I don't say anything. I almost do. I reach, I yearn, stretching for something unobtainable.
Unforgettable.
Then Simone walks in.
I don't think how it looks to have Kiki wrapping her arms around mine.
Those cool green eyes go frosty in the moment it takes her to walk through the door.
Kiki looks between the two of us. The moment of bonding shatters.
My next breath is shaky, but I'm getting crap under control.
Kiki turns to me. “Are you shitting me?”
“What?”
I've been asking that question a lot lately.
Kiki tilts her head. “Is there something going on between you and Simone?”
I look at her for a heartbeat and say yes as Simone says no.
We glare at each other.
Kiki laughs and claps.
She points at me. “You, my man, move fast!”
I give a disgusted sigh. “Not helpful, Kiki.”
But my eyes are already sliding to Simone, the woman who would deny what stands between us.
She stares back. Haughty, unmoved.
She sure the fuck wasn't neutral when I was putting my hot dog in her roll. Helllll no.
It was perfect and alive.
Simone looks at Kiki from under her eyelashes. “We've met, Thorn and I.”
Holy fuck, have we met.
Kiki smirks at the two of us. She loops her arm through Simone's, turning her back toward the door.
“Simone's going to work poles first, then she can
come back and do that lap for you, Thorn,” Kiki tosses over her shoulder.
Yeah, I answer silently.
Because I'm worried what I'll say if I actually open my yap.
Simone never turns around, and my eyes are glued to her ass. I think about her finger in me as I was buried inside her.
Sweat beads on my upper lip. Simone's got me in a damn lather.
I don't think I can stand a lap with Simone without doing more.
Much more.
I hear the music come on for the poles and know Kiki will show her the moves.
I think Simone's moves are pretty good without any training.
EIGHT
Simone
I follow Kiki out to the main part of the Black Rose. I walk the perimeter of the dais. Etched mirrors look like fractured diamonds as they line the three-foot high platform.
It's not for royalty, though it looks like a throne could be there.
Instead, a pole spears the center of a narrow but perfectly circular island. Essentially, it's a runway leading to a stranded bit of dance floor with a lone pole, like a de-leafed metal palm tree in its center.
Kiki turns, sees my expression, and sighs. “Listen, I know that dancing with a bunch of horny trolls watching sucks. Pretend you're a ballerina.”
I'm great at pretending. I’ve left my body in favor of my imagination many times. Not by choice.
I’ve protected my mind many times, and my body when I could.
“It's okay. The BR has a good rep.”
Kiki nods, and I watch her hair, admiring the way the soft spirals just touch the top of her lower back. She pushes it away as I watch.
“What?” she asks self-consciously.
“Nothing.” I lift a shoulder and glance at my feet. The rug is still nice, unlike some of the strip joints I looked at. “Just… your hair's so nice.” I lift my chin and smile.
Kiki barks a laugh. “Girl, in the dictionary where it says hot, your picture is there.”
Now it's my turn to be self-conscious. I shake my head a little. “I'm not uniform enough, blond enough—”
Kiki covers my mouth with her hand. “Fuck that noise. You've got a little color in you, and it's all the right kind.” Kiki circles me. “Nice booty”—I feel my face flame—“good rack, black hair—very big.”
I smile, cocking a hip. She's right about that.
Kiki comes full circle, and her eyes land on mine. “And those eyes—wow.”
savage 07 - the dark savage Page 26
