by Amber Lin
“All right, your point is made.”
“I’m not selling her to you.”
“And I wasn’t planning on paying you. I find that sex by the hour holds less interest for me now that a certain woman is out of the game.”
“How flattering,” I said flatly.
He shrugged. “Money is a means to an end. You know that. You were perfectly happy with our arrangement at one time.”
“That’s true.”
“Fine, so I’m feeling a little guilty.”
I shook my head in affectionate exasperation. “This isn’t the first time I’ve had to make a guy feel better about what I do, but I never expected to do it for you.”
“I had everything perfectly justified in my head.” He scowled. “Until she came here.”
“She has a way of disrupting the status quo,” I agreed.
“With you, it was different. You had been doing this already. You knew what you were getting into. It was a job for you, and you did it well.”
I inclined my head. “Thank you.”
“But she’s…”
He looked lost in thought, bewildered.
“I don’t know what she is. She seems so young, and yet she’s clearly old enough. She’s innocent, but she swears like a sailor. She wants to have sex, but she doesn’t… She hasn’t…”
“A virgin. I think that’s the word you’re looking for.”
“Christ. Is she really?”
“Pretty sure.”
“How unsavory.” He looked fascinated.
“Hmm. You remember that you promised to keep your hands off. Do I need to fit her with a chastity belt around you?”
His arousal thrummed through the air. “Only if you want me to physically pry it from her body and fuck her raw.”
Of course, if her purity turned him on, it made sense that chastity would too. Apparently he’d found a new fetish, although whether his trigger was purity or just Ella, I wasn’t sure. “Never mind. We’ll just have to rely on your honor.”
“We really are in danger.” He grew serious. “I want to keep her, but if I did… If she were really with me, she wouldn’t be able to go back.”
“She doesn’t belong here. She’s not like you and me.”
“So get her the hell out of my house,” he snapped, but his anger deflated quickly.
I spoke quietly. “I don’t see why you’re in knots over her anyway. You were like meat on a slab to those women when we went out. And yet you never fucked any of them.”
“I had you,” he said.
My heart melted a little at the simplicity of that statement. As if he had no reason to look elsewhere when he had me. As if we had been a real couple.
“You could have slept with other women when we were together. It’s not like I would have quit.”
“I wouldn’t have. I thought of you as my girlfriend.”
His honesty was touching and guilt inducing. Sure, it had been the girlfriend experience all the way. He hadn’t just taken me out on dates. I had lived here. The envelope that appeared on my bedside table could have been an allowance in a certain kind of relationship. And I had cared about him. I still did.
But if it was possible to cheat on him emotionally, I had done so. All along, I had wanted another man. From the look on Philip’s face, self-deprecating and a little weary, he knew it too.
Chapter Six
Jeans and a Bears cap flattened me into just another Chicago citizen. Anyway, no one would expect me to sniff around at the station while on the CPD’s most-wanted list. Even I was a little surprised that I dared. It was almost like I wanted to get caught.
But I had reasons for coming here, and they weren’t only about seeing a certain cop. I couldn’t stop thinking about what Jade had said. It niggled at me, the way Jenny was connected to Henri through her boyfriend. The way she had been targeted for her relationship to him.
Henri kept a few girls in his inner circle, and she was one of them. So was I. What if I had been targeted the same way?
I had dismissed the idea at first. I hadn’t had a druggie boyfriend who could have screwed Henri over. I had just been a dumb blonde in need of large quantities of cash. Open and shut. No mystery. But the thought had come back, worrying and worrying at me until I had to come here just to prove it wrong.
The old colonial building bustled with distracted cops and jaded public attorneys. A rumpled suit held the door open for me, and I walked in, hiding in plain sight, immersing myself in the spill of sweaty worker bees. Some people might think a prostitute would get nervous here, but what was a police station except a brick box of men with something to prove? Criminals, law enforcement officers. Customers, all of them.
I didn’t quite have the audacity, or the suicidal fortitude, to walk straight into the detective’s bull pen. Instead I exited the flow near the back offices. A shudder ran through me as I passed the double doors to the morgue; I preferred my marks alive, thank you very much. Ah, there it was: the evidence room. Possibly the safest place in this joint and definitely the friendliest.
A small bulletproof window had an opening at the bottom, like one of those banks from the eighties that screamed “we don’t trust you” to their customers. At least they were honest.
I rapped on the window. A few minutes later, Chase appeared. His face went slack with disbelief when he saw me. I imagined he would have gone pale too, if his skin weren’t practically obsidian.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he muttered, his white teeth flashing. Not a smile; a grimace.
“And here I thought you liked me.”
“I do like you. That’s why I don’t want you raped and dumped in the river.”
His words sobered me, but I refused to let it show. Never let them see you sweat. I raised an eyebrow. “Are you going to let me in or not?”
A buzz sounded from the door beside me, signaling it was unlocked. With a quick glance at the distended mass of distracted people, I slipped inside. Chase grabbed my hand and yanked me to the back room. The dimly lit space had only room for two. Once there, he pulled me into a bear hug. It should have been all bones and angles, with his thin form, but instead warmth enveloped me, outside and in. Cardboard particles and dust tickled my nose and brought tears to my eyes.
“Damn, girl,” he said, releasing me. “I’m sorry I freaked out on you, but give a guy some warning. I almost had a heart attack when I saw you.”
“Next time, I’ll put an announcement in the paper, let you know I’m coming.”
“There isn’t going to be a next time. You shouldn’t be here, not in the station, not in Chicago. Just start over. Start a new life somewhere else.”
“And let them win?” I teased, although the joke was really on me. I had long ago given up any delusions of triumph, licking the boots and sucking the cocks of Chicago’s elite.
“If you want to beat them, stay alive.”
“So earnest, so loyal,” I cooed. “I love that about you, Chase.”
He sent me a cross look. “Stop it.”
“Stop what?”
“Acting fake.”
That’s what I got for being honest. I did love Chase, in a little-brother kind of way. I had always appreciated that he’d never made a move on me. Sure, he was gay, but I found that most men weren’t too discriminating about the warm, wet place they put their dicks.
We’d met in my early days in the life. He’d worked for some dealer. Now he was on the city’s payroll. Not much of a step up, in my humble opinion, but at least it gave him the respectability and confidence he’d always wanted.
“Fine,” I murmured. “If you want the truth, I came here to see Luke.”
“Now how did I know that?”
I ticked off the reasons. “Because I’m his informant. Because he’s working my case.”
“Not anymore. You stopped being his informant a long time ago, and he just got kicked off your case, off all his cases. He’s on administrative leave.”
“T
he hell he is.” Luke must be going crazy. Administrative leave was an insult, like getting fucked in the ass, too fast and too hard, and I knew exactly how that felt.
“Yeah, well, the captain was a little pissed when he found out you had been to his apartment.”
Guilt turned my gut. “I didn’t know where else to go.” As soon as the words were out, I realized how pathetic that sounded. “I didn’t know who to trust at the time.”
He shrugged, unconcerned, except I saw the way his mouth was set. Frustrated. Protective?
“You don’t need to involve him in this, and you know it.”
If Jade was right, Luke was already involved in this, maybe more than me. He’d been on the scene longer, fighting Henri when I was just an unholy gleam in my father’s eye. “I need to talk to him.”
He wanted to refuse; I could tell. But he wouldn’t. I hadn’t given away his previous life to Luke or anyone else, so he owed me. I wouldn’t have told anyway, but he didn’t need to know that.
“I’ll bring him here, but don’t…” He looked away. “Don’t do that other thing you do.”
I grew still. The only sounds were the muffled and nebulous rush of people through the wall, as if I held my ear to a shell. Empty, hollow, how I felt inside. “Fuck him?” I offered quietly. “Is that what I shouldn’t do? Don’t worry that we’d make a mess in here. I’m a professional.”
“Hurt him,” he said, his mouth taut, body tense. “Don’t hurt him.”
Without looking at me, he turned and disappeared out the back room door. I heard the front room door clang shut. I stared at the rows of dusty boxes. Hurt Luke? A laugh escaped me. As if I could. I leaned against the stack of boxes and let the irony wash over me. Hurt Luke, when I ached for him. Hurt him while he searched for some other girl.
She probably had a case file in here. All the more recent reports were digitized, but the police department still kept the hand-scrawled, dead-tree documents around, right in this room. What would hers say? Missing persons, maybe. Solicitation, drug-related arrests were all par for the course if she was in the life. Without a name, I’d never find her. If Luke had a file, it would be in some internal affairs lockdown, not here. I didn’t even know Ella’s real name.
I only had a few minutes. My file was a pathetically thin bundle, considering my current fugitive status. There were the solicitation charges Henri had set up for me to keep me in line. There were a few blacked-out pages from the incident where I’d gotten shot. And a note: Full immunity. The benefits of being an informant.
In the back, there was a brief report from when the police had interviewed me over a fellow escort who’d disappeared. It didn’t include the outcome of that investigation, but I knew she’d never been found, because I still got an anonymous postcard every Christmas with a palm tree on it.
I replaced my file and skipped a few files down to dear old Dad’s. Stephan Laurent. It wasn’t a big surprise that he had a file. It meant nothing. I flipped it open.
Suspected for embezzlement. I tsked softly. Couldn’t afford the current year’s Mercedes? Or did Juanita finally nail you for knocking up her daughter?
Where had he embezzled from? It didn’t say, and I couldn’t remember who he worked for or even what he did. My only memories were of roaming eyes and cruel words. How he’d made his money had been the last thing on my child’s mind, and when I was older, I had more important things to worry about than angry conference calls in veiled business-speak behind closed doors, but now the question took my breath away. So much money. No morals to speak of. It could have been anything.
A whole slew of blacked-out pages followed. Unease fluttered in my gut. It meant nothing.
On the last page: Full immunity.
What had he done that needed immunity? Who had he fucked over to get it?
I heard a scratch at the door. I slipped the file into its place and shoved the box back where it belonged, my stomach churning. Would he see the marks in the dust where I’d pulled it out? Was it even Luke who’d come? I trusted Chase well enough, but only a fool let down her guard in the belly of the beast. I clasped my hands together, the picture of innocence; meanwhile the words were emblazoned across my vision.
Above me, a lone lightbulb flickered in a rusted cage and then went out, plunging me into darkness. The door opened, and yellow light sluiced around a familiar silhouette before the latch clicked shut. My breath caught in my chest, a heavy bundle of anticipation—not fear, because I knew it was Luke.
Faint squeaking of rubber on concrete put him squarely in front of me. As my eyes adjusted, the slim light from underneath the door lent him a faint glow. I could even smell his soap through the haze of dust between us. But none of those things confirmed his identity as much as the simmering tension that pulsed through my veins when he was near.
“How’s the sexiest detective?” I murmured into the darkness.
“Were you sure it was me, or is that just how you greet everyone here?”
“Jealous?”
“Pissed, Shelly. I’m pissed. Why are you here?”
Neither pissed nor jealous accurately described what he felt. Something closer to despair. I knew it, the way I knew what every man wanted, their dirty desires marking me, degrading me whether they touched me or not. Allie had called me the man whisperer, but she thought I didn’t understand Luke. I did. Maybe not completely, but enough to know he was like the rest of them. He wanted my body, my mind; he wanted to consume me whole more than any other man.
But he didn’t. It fascinated me, or it had until I’d found out the reason—some old loyalty and Luke too steadfast to ever stray. Mystery solved.
“I had to see you,” I purred. “I couldn’t be apart from you one minute longer.”
“Save the BS for someone who’s paying you.”
I blinked. “Yeah, okay.” Deep breath. It’s not personal, just business. “I need you to come with me to a club Saturday night. That’s where Ella got taken.”
A beat passed. “I’ll go. Alone.”
“Where would the fun be in that? Besides, you’ll have to excuse me if I don’t quite trust you after that stint at your apartment.”
“I was caught off guard when I heard you had a warrant out. I had to improvise.”
“With my head on a platter? Nice play.”
“I’ve done everything to keep you safe. I can’t help you if you don’t trust me. Goddamn it, Shelly, you walked into the middle of a fucking snake nest. Sometimes I think you want to get yourself shot, for someone to do what you can’t do yourself.”
Shock numbed me, but slowly feeling crept back in. Of course, he wasn’t just a pretty face. Allie knew me better than anyone, but even she wouldn’t have called that one. This was a new side of him, more aggressive. I wasn’t sure I liked it. “What’s gotten into you? If I’m so annoying, you should hope I’m caught.”
A pause. “I didn’t mean to say that. I’ve taken a lot of shit around here since you came to my place.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
“Yes, you damn well should have. Should have come to me, should have trusted me. Do you really think I care what those fuckhead bureaucrats think? I went insane thinking you were caught, hurt, dead. Thinking the next Jane Doe in the morgue was going to be you. Checking in case it was. You want to know what’s gotten into me? You, goddamn it, you. Too goddamned selfish to let me know you’re okay, so fucking cavalier, walking right into headquarters. Jesus.”
Pride was a funny thing for a prostitute. We really shouldn’t have had any left, and yet haughtiness was practically the hallmark of a sex worker. The last time I was with Henri, he made me do every degrading thing in his repertoire, waiting for me to balk. It would have been his crowning moment. I’d come to him for help, and if I said no to anything, even once, the deal would have been off. Victorious, I’d made it through, physically broken, mentally numb, and when I held the money in my hand, this was how I’d felt. The same way I felt now, standing in
front of Luke in the dark, his words like lashes tracing over the silvery scars on my back. He cared about me; he hated me, the most devastating part.
“Fuck.” His word rang out in the darkness, with apology, with frustration, and not a drop of hope.
“I don’t owe you anything,” I said.
“No, you’ve been very careful to ensure that.”
“So why’d you turn the light off?”
“You know why. For the same reason you came here.”
Arrogant man, but he wasn’t wrong. His air touched me first, the rush of movement against my body, his breath a caress on my lips. Then warmth to soothe me, his lips soft, body hard. His kiss tender, cock rigid against my belly. I allowed him inside, just barely, a taste of submission. I softened my hips, offered a gentle roll upward, a hint of arousal. For good measure, I slipped my hand behind his neck, stroking him, well practiced.
“Stop,” he muttered against my lips.
I pulled back. Every man was different, a unique sum of a thousand different variables, and my body nothing more than a machine designed to solve them.
When in doubt, return to what worked. I opened my mouth another degree, and he took full advantage, sweeping his tongue against mine. His hand touched the back of my neck in a mirror image of my gesture, except instead of a caress, he tilted my head back, deepened the kiss. He put me at a disadvantage. Yes, I want that too.
His other hand fumbled briefly at my jeans before slipping them down to my thighs. I felt helpless, blinded by the dark, pinned to the wall by his body and my clothing. Even my hearing was altered, flooded by my harsh breaths and his. Any number of men had held full control over my body before now, but this was Luke, and how quickly he had done it, how easily he had rendered me willing and my consent irrelevant. I moaned my approval.
“You’re doing it again,” he muttered.
“Doing what?”
“What you think I want.”
“How do you know it’s not what I want too?”
He paused. “Is it?”
I didn’t know. A soft, almost inaudible sob escaped. How sad was that? Sex was my profession, but I didn’t understand my own desires.
