BRANDED

by April Lust

  How could I turn that down?

  # # #

  That night, I went home to my little apartment. It was a studio with a heavy curtain decorated with a fictional, but gorgeous beach drawn down the middle. That was the “bedroom” which really just meant when Bree was home from the hospital, she could have a little bit of privacy. A studio apartment was small for one person, let alone two. Right now, it was drawn aside, exposing the bed pushed up against the far wall. That bed had been made for the last three months because Bree had spent them all in the hospital.

  Tearing my eyes from that sight and the depressing thoughts that went with it, I turned to the kitchen. I deposited the pie in the fridge – there was another one beside it, a six pack of beer that had been there for months, and an old sandwich that might have originally had green stuff on it… or not.

  Sighing, I acknowledged that I needed to go grocery shopping soon. I mostly ate at the diner, because we got one free meal and as much pie as any girl could dream of. But I couldn’t live only on that, though I’d tried for a while now. It was probably why my waist was so small. The pies went to my hips and my boobs, thank god, but I was always hungry, it seemed.

  Grabbing a beer – because I needed something if I was really going to do this – I headed to my bed. I pulled out my laptop and turned it on. It took a while to boot up, because it was about as old as it was heavy and could likely stop a bullet. It was also glitchy and incapable of holding a charge in the battery. I was firmly attached to the wall whenever I used it.

  When the damn thing finally booted up, I was halfway through my foul beer. I quickly pulled up my search engine. Then I just stared. The little bar blinked at me, waiting, but I was having a hard time convincing myself to do it.

  Didn’t people monitor stuff like this?

  Worrying at my lower lip, I drained the rest of my beer, then quickly got up to grab another. This time I brought the whole pack out with me. At my computer again, I resolved to do it. Don’t be a chickenshit all your life, Allison. Your sister needs you. Grow a pair.

  And with that, I typed in how to sell your virginity.

  I spent the rest of the night reading about the pros and the cons, the successes and the horror stories. By the time the sun was coming up, I was buzzing with nervousness – and just the smallest, tiniest piece of excitement.

  Was I really going to do this?

  I was, actually. I just needed to figure out how. Putting it on one of those auction sites wasn’t a good idea, because it drew too much attention. You had to have an account and an address and a bunch of other things that could be tracked right back to your doorstep. I could be arrested for prostitution.

  It’s not prostitution, it’s not prostitution. That had been my mantra for the last five hours, but I knew what I was doing. The law wouldn’t appreciate it.

  I’d about given up on putting out an ad at all when I remembered Christel talking about those alternative life magazines. Would it be possible to…?

  I didn’t think, I just searched. It took me another hour and two slices of pie, but I found a magazine I liked and paid fifty bucks that I didn’t have to put a short little ad in that was the equivalent of “I’ll let you pop my cherry; email me.”

  Now, I just had to wait.

  Chapter Two

  Jules

  She walked in like a panther stalking her prey – if the panther had been bleached blonde and dumber than a box of rocks. Her heels gave her at least five extra inches and the skanky leopard-print top she was wearing revealed that her tits were likely as fake as her hair. None of which bothered me for a quick fuck, but I knew the look on her heavily made-up face.

  It told me she was looking for a sugar daddy and I was a lot of things, but not that.

  I’d finished up with my last customer, Maria, and was cleaning up before my three o’clock. George was an old friend in his early fifties and he’d requested a tattoo in memory of his wife. She passed away only a year ago. There was no question that it still ate him up inside.

  The bimbo in front waltzed toward the counter where Paul was staring at her ample cleavage like he could find God down there. But her eyes were on me, even when she leaned her heavy tits over the counter for the poor boy to get a better look.

  Why not just flash the poor fuck? I thought.

  “Can you help me?” she asked him, batting eyelashes I assumed were false.

  Paul looked like he was trying not to blow his load right then and there. “Um… uh, yeah. W-what’cha need?”

  “I was hoping to get a tattoo.” Her eyes slid to me again. “Right here.” She pulled her top down even further and it was a fucking miracle her nipple didn’t slide out. She slid her finger across the exposed skin there and winked at me.

  I resisted the urge to roll my eyes and returned to cleaning up. Despite the natural reaction to the woman’s tit – about half a hard-on growing in my leather pants – I really wasn’t interested in fucking her. She looked like way too much drama and maintenance. Not the kind of girl I liked playing with.

  But so few of them are… My mind flashed to Sandra, but I wrenched it back before I went down that path again. I didn’t have time for that shit now.

  “Jesus,” Paul breathed, eyes wide and mouth hanging open slightly. “Um, yeah. I’ll… see who’s available.”

  Paul managed to tear his eyes away long enough to type a few keys, checking schedules. While he was busy, she grinned over at me. “What about you, handsome?” I barely spared her a glance. “Can you do me?”

  The do me wasn’t subtle, an accident, or innocent in the slightest. I didn’t know if she really wanted a tattoo or not, but the woman oozed sex.

  Part of me gave a half a second to considering what she might do in the sack, but my mind quickly went to dangerous places. When I imagined her on her knees, her legs spread open by a bar between them, and a collar around her neck while her mouth was stuffed with a gag, I knew I couldn’t give her a shot. She looked about dumb enough to let me do what I wanted without thinking too much about what it really meant.

  That was unacceptable.

  Leaning out of my little booth, I waved at Leo who had a free hour between appointments. “Leo, take her, would you? I’ve got one in a few.”

  Leo was not only my good friend, but a member of the Wild Aces like me. We rode together, and talked everything from pussy to choppers. He had a sliver of an idea of my personal tastes, but even he didn’t understand my reluctance to fuck a clearly willing piece of ass. Of course, Leo would fuck just about anything that opened for him. He wasn’t picky.

  Raising a single eyebrow at me, he glanced between her and me, then back. “Sure, brother.” Then he waved the little thing over. But she wasn’t having it. I spared her a short look and saw that her face was flushed with anger. She’d jerked her shirt back up to cover her too-round tit and threw her bottle blonde hair over her shoulder.

  “Never mind,” she bit off. “I changed my fucking mind.”

  Then she swiveled around and stomped off, heels clicking as she went. The poor kid at the counter, Paul, had huge eyes and didn’t seem entirely sure what had happened.

  “I think you offended her,” Leo told me with a grin.

  I snorted. “Obviously hard to do.”

  Leo barked at Paul to go get him more ink needles from the back and the boy rushed like a tornado to do as asked. When he disappeared through the back door which led to storage, Leo turned back to me.

  “What is your problem?” he demanded. He wasn’t really angry or anything, but this wasn’t exactly the first time I’d pawned off a piece of tail so that I didn’t have to deal with it.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I muttered to him. I glanced at the clock; George was running late.

  “Whatever, dude. You know what I mean. That bitch probably would have gone down on you right here. While I watched. She all but begged you to put it in her.”

  I didn’t give him an answer, because Leo was
fine with a little bondage, but he didn’t get the rest. He didn’t understand the playroom or the collars or the control. He didn’t know.

  “What are you, gay?”

  I raised a single eyebrow in his direction. He was joking, we both knew it, but he quickly backpedaled anyway. “Kidding, kidding.” He looked toward the door, clearly still thinking about the woman. “Too bad she left. She could have been good for the tattoo competition.”

  I shot Leo a look. “Are you out of your fucking mind?”

  He shrugged. “What? She was hot. People love sexy, tatted-up titties, you know that.”

  I rolled my eyes. Yes, they did, but I didn’t want some leopard print piece of white trash modeling my shit. “Fuck, Leo. She probably already has a damn lower back tattoo or maybe one straight up on her pussy.”

  He grinned at me. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

  “To each their own,” I conceded. “But I’m not entering some generic bimbo for the competition. I want someone classy, naturally beautiful.” I nodded toward the door. “The closest thing to natural on that woman was the damn leopard print.”

  Leo laughed at me, but shook his head. “Jesus, Ink. Sometimes your standards are too high.”

  I didn’t care. I wanted the best, and I’d have that, or nothing.

  Leo went to find Paul when the boy took way too long to find the damn needles – or maybe he just didn’t want to deal with my too-high standards – and I was left alone to wait for George. I sat in the chair, leaning way back and lifting my arms to rest them on my head. Now that I was left alone, I admitted how long it had been.

  Sure, I’d had sex recently. Hell, I’d shot my load into that woman from the bar only last night. But sex was boring lately. It was the kind of sex that did the job the same way jerking off did. It took care of the problem, but it was only a quick fix for a deeper, darker urge that was always there in the background, waiting.

  It was that waiting that had me on edge about women. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could do this vanilla crap before I finally just caved to my desires.

  # # #

  George showed up nearly fifteen minutes late, and I chewed his ass over it, but we still sat down to do the job. He was a good enough friend that I let his tardiness slide. We talked only a little, mostly about the tattoo and how much his wife had meant to him. He’d have to come back in for another session to finish up, but the scene looked good. I was proud of it.

  There were only a few more appointments after that, split up between me and Leo. Paul answered phone calls and spent the rest of the time fetching things for Leo who liked to see him run or flipping through that stupid magazine of his.

  We were closing up when Paul came to lean against the door frame, holding the magazine in his hands. “Jeez, look at this shit!” He tapped on one of the pages. “Some chick is selling her virginity!”

  Leo snorted. “Seriously? Probably some fat cow, right?”

  Paul quickly agreed, but continued to read the magazine ad anyway. “‘23-year-old blonde female seeking man to take her virginity. For those inquiring, please contact—’ She lists an email. No picture though.” Paul skimmed a little farther and added, “‘Those unable to pay for the pleasure need not apply.’ Straight-up crazy. Is this even legal?”

  “Hell no. It’s prostitution. She probably isn’t even a virgin. She’s just trying to make a big deal or whatever about it so that some idiot will pay her a lot of dough just to get between her legs.”

  “Think she’s hot?”

  Leo snorted again. “No. Like I said, fat cow. If she could get any, she wouldn’t be a virgin.”

  Paul and Leo continued to discuss it, mentioning the drop-dead gorgeous models who’d sold their virginity and the college student here in the US. I shouldn’t have been as… intrigued as I was. Maybe it was the aching in my balls that had begun when I’d pictured that woman from earlier in my playroom, or maybe I’d just been stuck with the same old vanilla, missionary sex for too long now. But I wanted to know more about this offer.

  I wanted to know if she was still a virgin because she was unattractive or obnoxious, as Leo suggested, or if maybe, by some miracle, it was her shy, timid, submissive nature that had kept her legs together for this long.

  Dare I even dream of being so lucky?

  When we headed out for the day, I grabbed the magazine Paul had been looking at and decided before I even got home that I would email that woman.

  Chapter Three

  Allison

  I hated hospitals. It was the white everywhere: Walls, sheets, uniforms. All of it. Even the little damn pills were white. Or maybe it was that constant antiseptic smell that wars with the sickness of the place. You can’t really cover up the smell of the dead and the dying, but you can try to bleach it out.

  I hated the hopelessness of a place that mostly just tries to make your loved ones comfortable as they move toward a long, painful life and, eventually, death. But mostly I just hated that I’d seen the inside of this building for so many years now that I had the hallways memorized and I waved at the nurses, all of whom knew me by name. No one should be in the hospital that much.

  But Bree was, so I was, too.

  Today, I had flowers. They were picked out of the garden down by the park, so they weren’t perfect or cut just so, but Bree wouldn’t care. She’d love seeing anything with some color, something alive. And she wasn’t stupid, besides. She knew we didn’t have the money for frivolous stuff like that.

  Pushing open the door to her room, I found her sitting up. There were several pillows propping her up, easing the amount of work her body might have to do, and she was staring out the window. Her face was youthful, but pale. There were dark circles under her eyes and her lips looked almost ashy. Her hair was blonde like mine, but limp and a little greasy. She wore it pulled back a lot of times, but today it was down. It told me that she probably wasn’t feeling great. She got headaches from pulling it back so often.

  I knocked a little to let her know I was there. She turned to look at me, her face splitting into a wide smile. It made her look both better and so much worse. Happiness was strange like that.

  “Hey there,” I greeted, walking into the room and closing the door behind me. “How’s my favorite girl?”

  She rolled her eyes a little at me, but I could tell that she was pleased to see me. Not surprising. I don’t think anyone visited her besides myself and Christel. It wasn’t like she had any friends outside of the hospital anymore. “Good. Are those for me?” She motioned toward the flowers in my hands.

  I nodded and came to sit on the edge of her bed. I handed them over, quickly scanning the room to see if there was an empty vase around to put them in. I spotted the old glass that I’d used last time. It would work just fine again.

  She buried her face in the wildflowers and inhaled. It made me nervous a little, because if she had a reaction to the pollen or something… Well, that could go badly. Her body wasn’t in any shape to be fighting off diseases, not even little things.

  “Awesome,” she told me, putting them aside on her bedside table.

  “How are you today?” I hoped for a positive response, but that was foolish. She didn’t have good days anymore, she just had days that weren’t as bad as others.

  Her smile dropped a little and she shrugged. She looked so small, so fragile for a sixteen-year-old girl. It broke my heart. “Fine. I got Gloria today, so at least that doesn’t suck.” Gloria was one of the nurses that checked on Bree and came if she needed something. She was a thirty-something with a kid of her own and she always did her best to be chipper to Bree. I’d seen the sorrowful looks she offered my sister, though, when she wasn’t looking.

  “Thank god for small favors, right?”

  She nodded. Bree picked at the sleeve of her sweater. It was soft and pink, a loose knit that was light enough to wear even if it was warmer in her room, but would help with the chills she was prone to. I’d gotten it for her from a secondh
and store.

  Frowning, I glanced from the fraying sleeve to her downcast face. Something’s not right, I thought. I knew when my sister was nervous. My heart jumped a little at the thought that maybe today wasn’t an okay day. What if it was bad? What if she was in pain? Oh, hell, did the hospital try to call me about something really bad? I only turned my phone on again today, and if they’d called yesterday…

  Before I could let my mind run away with all of the horrible scenarios it was prone to come up with, I asked Bree. “Is everything okay? Is there something you want to talk about?” I didn’t want to ask if she was worse today. I couldn’t.

  Bree took a deep breath and lifted her chin so that she could look at me again. She had the same brown eyes as me, a little too large for her head and lined with very fine, light lashes. “I… I think we need to talk about the hospital.”