She blinked slowly and I did the same. We watched each other with a slight amazement that I was just not ready to understand. “Pretty name, Tristan.”
“How about yourself?”
“Dominique.”
“I like your name over mine.”
She laughed, another jolt as her gorgeous white teeth glared back at me. Her lips were slightly pursed, and glistened of a light appliance of lip gloss. She had a small scar just under her chin, but even that seemed to enhance her beauty far more.
“You know what I like about you, Tristan?”
“What’s that, Dominique?”
She pressed her forehead against mine. Her eyes lowered to my lips, as they were mere inches away.
“I like,” she whispered and I could feel her breath on my lips, “watching your heart skip beats just because I’m touching you.”
Dominique’s skin was hot, burning in fact, but soft and smooth. It was like the heat transferred to me, engulfing me in one swallow. I persed my lips, the need to blow out what I thought would be steam, and blew a cool stream of air. As in doing so, the top of my lip touched hers. She moaned. I leaned in to push my lips fully on hers for a kiss, something that I was dead set against, but the rules had changed greatly in a matter of moments, but she held tighter to the side of my head, stopping me, stilling me. Her half closed eyelids fluttered, her eyes meeting mine. She smiled a small but crooked smile.
She had me, saw all the want in my eyes and used it well against me. “I want it to mean something, Tristan. You get that now and it won’t.”
It was a perfect punch, a well excuted hit to my pride.
“Dominique?” A man’s voice called her from inside her hotel room.
Dominique released my face, almost shoving me away, but gently enough that I didn’t go soaring back. She looked at me and smiled a smile that spoke one word: Goodbye.
CHAPTER FOUR
Quick… break his legs and his arms no matter the mess!
God knows I wasn’t a praying man. I was well aware that there was a higher power, but hid from it just as much I wanted to believe that God had hidden from me.
Yet, I felt it was only right to say a few words for a body that had it’s unfortunate place to be on my table and for Zander to dispose of afterwards – after I defaced it, dismantled it - ruined whatever that person had been or could’ve been or ever was.
Just a few words of prayer; or more like a piece of help for their souls. I prayed that their afterlife would be a hell of a lot better than their living life, and the way the Rogue ended it.
The Rat, or may I say Mr. Moss’s body, had found it’s end in a very watery grave where crocodiles waited for their meal, and soon indulged. It was a job well done. It was the beginning to an end to the Fed’s invesitagion that centered on what Mr. Moss would bring from the Rogue’s closet that was bursting with skeletons. Zander and I should’ve been expected to come home to open arms, pats on the backs and whispers of appreciation in the ear for our work. I at least thought my father would have called in a couple of days, after the fact, and tell me I could come home – that maybe I could have my shot again to be apart of the family. That, just maybe, the bridge I had burned wasn’t completely ruined and I could backtrack, eat my words, learn my lesson, and be apart of the plan my father had had for me.
I only received silence, four weeks worth of it and still counting. And that silence left me uncomfortable and two notches away from pissed. My guess was my father and grandfather were closely watching the comings and going in Miami from a safe distance, waiting on any reports from the news, or police sources on the disappearance of Mr. Moss, and if the police, or the Feds, had any leads and if those leads led to the Rogue involement. And at knowing that, or guessing it, I hoped a dead croc didn’t surface with a partially eaten arm, or a fragment of broken, black glasses, in its stomach.
I was alone here.
And I would be alone if the Feds busted down the door.
I would be alone doing my time in Federal prison.
It was the Rogue Code. You do your crime in a joint effort, but your hard time alone. We were men, and we were expected to hold our own nuts like one, and you didn’t ask for someone to hold them for you. No. You did it alone.
Having ten thousand dollars to do whatever I wanted in South Beach Miami, should have been a breath of fresh air that I could breathe without feeling the bungle of my previous mistakes choking me. It wasn’t. I was already in a downward spiral. Zander and I both were. Now, it just seemed like the spiral had gotten much faster, and the ride much longer. South beach was a place you could burn your money if you had it. Ten thousand dollars was a hell of a lot of money to burn.
And my pockets were smoldering… But we stuck with the familiar flames: booze and whores…
…And more whores…
Zander allowed his whore to ride him. I watched as her head flung back, her eyes closed tightly as she pinched her bottom lip between her teeth, and it fascinated me at her flawless impersonation of a woman enjoying sex. Her moans was fake, and her countenance of lust was almost genuine but in my experience of bought-and-paid-for sex, told me she was giving a show – one hell of a good show, but she was slowly counting down the time until she could get off her John, and get her money.
With them on the bed, I entertained my hooker on the floor with a dingy towel as a buffer between her back and a carpeted floor that I was sure had never been cleaned since it was first laid down. The hooker had screamed to me that she wanted me go harder, faster, really harder, Papi, but I couldn’t risk rug burns on my knees, and felt I cared just enough for her well being not to give her burns on her back. I knew she had a raging drug addiction that she wasn’t finished sucking dicks to fufill and most men didn’t like their prostitutes bruised.
I wondered if addictions were worth what most would have to succumb to just to support it.
Zander and I’s addictions had us secured by a noose. We were on our last dollars, and I had wanted – only because we couldn’t afford it – to forgo the paid sex tonight. Zander whined and pleaded until I relented. He needed his escape. He hadn’t gotten any better from the day he watched the Rat get tortured. By his eyes alone I knew he was haunted. He had seen the uglier side of the business and came back scathed and scared.
I was haunted too.
But there was more than one ghost; I had several aspirations that paraded around in bed sheets and went boo.
I looked into the face of the whore pinned beneath me. I didn’t like what I saw. What I was looking at was an extension of me. I truly believed that, in sex, you are who you fucked, just like you were who you hung around. I watched as her face shifted, catching images of the previous women I had been with. There was so many, and as a man, I should have been proud. But I wasn’t. It was a fusillade faces, showing just how I had allowed myself to sink. The faces of my women continued to roll just like a slot machine would tick down to the final pictures and let you know if you were a winner or a loser.
And I was a loser…
I saw Lulina under me. Her perfect mouth smiled, baring her straight white teeth and her eyes twinkled.
“I will always have you, Tristan, and you’ll never have me,” she giggled like she knew just what she was talking about and so did I.
I closed my eyes trying to shake the nightmare. My forehead creased at the concentration. I wanted her to be gone, and I wanted her pain to go with it. And it did. Yet, someone else took her place, and here came an old pain, an insufferable pain, a price that just kept on charging, raged anew.
“Tristan?” Katie asked.
My hips stilled as the image became clearer. The whore’s face had disappeared and those blue eyes watched me. They were filled with so much love – the kind of eyes you see before a tradegy had struck.
“I love when you look at me, Tristan,” she whispered. She stuck out her tongue, tasting her lip gloss then licked around her perfect set of teeth. “About the baby, I want her to hav
e your eyes.”
Chills radiated down my spine. I was lost in a very ugly memory, but still I played the part in my conversation that had taken place almost two years ago.
“How do you know it’s a girl?” I asked.
“I just do; I just know.”
“We can’t, Katie, it isn’t right.” I breathed deeply, choosing the words carefully. I had to make her understand. “Everyone will know it’s not Harely’s child.”
“She’s not; she yours. What we did was beautiful, Tristan. I want her to have your eyes and your hair – I want her to have everything that’s you.”
Her hands touched my arm. I could see her pale white skin in contrast to my slightly darker one.
A few shades mean the world to most than just a few…
I tried to pull away but she stopped me.
“There’s nothing wrong with your skin, Tristan.”
“It’s darker than yours.”
“So?”
So? My grandfather had beaten into me that my skin was an abomination to the world he lived in.
Ironically, my skin tone wasn’t much different from him - a burnt carmeal.
What Katie had hoped to have, I knew what could never be. I hated her for getting pregnant. I hated her for wanting the child and for wanting me. I had hated her for not understanding that Papa had done a very exceptional job in making me insecure of my race, and for that, my own hate at the color of my skin, could never be lifted by one single acception: hers. I had hated her for not understanding that, even if I was a true itilian man that having a child would be signing our death certificate because she was married woman, and her marriage wasn’t to me. It disgusted me that the world she had once lived in wasn’t as cruel as the world I was born in.
Katie had been ready to throw away everything for me. No matter if she was losing a husband that she didn’t love. She would be leaving the life of luxury and stability he could provide. Outside of my family, I had nothing. There was no degree I could hide behind. There wasn’t even a high school diploma I could fall back on. There was nothing I could give her or our child.
“Please,” I pleaded silently out loud but seemed like shout inside my own skull, “leave me alone.”
I had done this to myself. I didn’t like it but I was strapped in tight for the sentient of shame, remorse, anger and loniless.
The nightmare finally drained away. Slowly, the paid sex slithered back into its normal rythymn.
That is, until my newest ghost took the stage.
Dominique lifted her head, touching her forehead to mine. A simple move but it ended me. My heart throbbed and wiggled as if it was alive and wanted out. My God, those gray eyes, those facet eyes that bored into me like a heated sword would plunge through my skin like knife would butter. The raw edge of hurt that Lulina left bleeding and gapping, ceased to exist.
My fingers scrapped against the carpet as I curled my fist and clenched them. I was losing ground to reality and doing it fast. I was falling hard and was trying to go down with a fight.
I bit my lip, the fight lost, and felt tears welled as I asked, “Tell me I’m good enough…please…”
Dominique’s hands stroked my face. She put her finger against my lips. Her eyes were so kind and warming.
“Will you kiss me, Tristan?”
I nodded. “Will you tell me I’m good enough to kiss you,” I asked sheepishly.
I needed her acceptance. I needed to know if I was indeed good enough to have my lips against hers. In a dream, I may have gotten my answer. This was a nightmare and the silence to my plea was loud and terribly clear.
And as easy as the image came about, it was gone. I saw the woman I paid my last hundred dollars to screw.
The whore nodded furiously and said: “Papi, come, ram me harder.”
She was in mid orgasm and I felt I had broken the John’s code. I had made my whore cum, when I, myself, had not. It was like ordering food in a restrarunt, and when the waitress brought your meal, you pushed it back to her to eat, all the while saying: here, you look like you’re hungry.
“Come on, Papi, make me scream!” She hollered and dugged her nails sharply into my back. “Oh valto, you so good!”
Her English was a broken as her childhood must have been. And her words felt like nails grating against a chalk board.
***
Zander’s whore wanted to take a shower and he followed behind her like a lost puppy. I lit a cigarette and flicked on the rickety TV. There was nothing I wanted to watch but I needed the break in silence. My whore crawled up on the bed with me and nestled against my arm pit. I didn’t have the heart to push her off me.
Sometimes we all need comforting…
I rested my hand on her shoulder and pulled her closer to me, enjoying the warmth for the briefest of moments. She exhaled and nuzzled closer and I let her. It was an unspoken silence, but filled with understanding that we both hadn’t received enough hugs in our lives.
I grew up alone and abused by my family. I used my rage and frustration to win my battles. I was kicked out of school at fourteen for putting three boys – all older than me by at least two years - in the hospital after they caught me with a prostitute behind the school. The spoiled bastards had laughed at me for it, threatened they would tell everyone. I had saw red and something loud and steady clicked inside my head, and the rage that had built up nicely, waiting with an intensified harshness, broke through like a levy that had taken on too much water.
I pounced.
I had turned their laughter into screams of terror and then to shrieks of in pure pain, and agony. I had been A straight student, one of the brightest in my class, but that meant nothing when my teacher saw the aftermath of my rage unleashed. I thought I had showed my strength to my father. A Rogue man had to be strong, and here I had given the best example of strength.
My father didn’t congradulate me, he waded in.
And I could barely sit from the vicious beating I received for the fight. He cursed me as he drove a leather belt into my ass. He cursed me harder than he would curse a whore. When he was done, when the belt was broken and tattered in his hand, he left me there. No hug. No ‘I love you, Tristan, you will learn from this’, nothing but him leaving and closing the door behind himself. I had embarrassed him. I had embarrassed the family.
He had begun to give up on me then…
I did not cry. My skin was broken and bleeding but I refused to cry. Papa walked in after hours of me being curled up on the floor. He looked at me and I looked at him. Half of me believed he was going to pick up where my father left off. The other half was ready to kill him if he tried.
“You’re strong, Tristan,” He spoke calmly.
I could barely see him through the warm, still flowing blood that trickled down my face – the belt buckle had caught me good a couple of times on the top of my head.
“If you were not a nigger,” he said, “you would run this family. I see it in your eyes. I see what makes a Rogue in your face.”
“Fuck the Rogue,” I spat.
I saw stars when he slapped me so hard my bottom lip tore from his rings.
“You will not take this family’s name and trash it. Do you understand me?”
My mouth swelled with blood. It dribbled down my chin and unto my already bloody shirt. I had been securely beaten silent and Papa took my silence for compliance.
He cleared his throat. “Nobody is going to give you anything in this world. Not even your family. We’re your worse enemies and we are your blood, Tristan. You remember that, you hear me?”
I said nothing, and, again, he took my silence as compliance.
The whore slipped her hand over my stomach. “You have a nice place here.”
I huffed and glanced around the tight, shitty hotel room. It wasn’t nice with its faded carpet and dirty drapes, but I figured it was miles better than a street corner with Johns driving down the road checking you out. When Zander and I first started out, we were in nicer, se
parate hotels rooms. Between the whores and drinking, we slowly declined. Now we were sharing a room with one bed because it was all we could afford. We would alternate to who would get the hard floor and who would get the bed day after day.
As if sensing my very thoughts, she corrected, “Well, it’s better than the corner me and her work.”
The change in her accent – the broken English switched for full sentences that didn’t end in Papi – wasn’t lost on me. Somehow, the hooker lifted the veil of grimy Latina working hooker, to a woman who happened to have a day job that consisted of blow jobs and sex with a person she may not want standing near her, but allowed in her body. There was no need to continue with the façade. I had lost my own role at the paying John looking to blow off steam when I hadn’t had an orgasm and she had.
The warmth in her body eased me. My hand slipped from her shoulder, slid between her arm and waist and found its home on her hip. She nuzzled closer, her head resting on my chest, her mouth just inches from my nipple.
But, yet, our movements weren’t sexually stimulated.
My fingertips played at the skin. It was a wonder to me how a woman, no matter how hard life had been or was, could still have skin that was smooth and velvetly to the touch. I felt her heartbeat against my side and breathed slowly, my chest collapsing as the exhale escaped. And as I exhaled, she wiped at her eyes as if the closeness, or lack of, had touched a very deep place and it didn’t sit well. I refused to look down to confirm if she was crying or not. It was fear that if I saw those tears it would bring my own. I looked up to the cheap, crumpling ceiling, my cigarette clenched between my teeth. I hissed as I inhaled a lung full of smoke and blew it out.
We were in repose from our adventure on the floor and we had found a common ground that was rare and neither one of us was ready to allow the moment to slip by talking over it and mucking it up. We were both in deep thought. We were skin to skin but worlds away at the same time. Maybe she was thinking of her life that ended with her needing to sell her body. My mind glided to the woman I had met on the balcony with a dead man leaking in the tub not to far away. Seeing Dominique’s face, seeing those gray orbit pools that made up her eyes, was like a lighting bolt and I jumped slightly. I couldn’t help but remember the way her skin creased slightly as a smile was about to erupt and burn anything in its path. Her face sliced brutally at my mind and my heart burned in response.
Rogue (In the life of the Rogue Book 1) Page 6
