by Keri Lake
I slid my hand down my stomach, past the waistband of my sweatpants and into my boxers, where my dick confirmed how badly I needed some release. So hard I could’ve hammered nails with the happy bastard. Last time he’d seen any action had been a blowjob my ex had given me in her attempt to reconcile, after I’d caught her grinding on some younger guy at the club and later found out she’d fucked him that same night beside a dumpster in the alley. Classy, as always. I’d let her finish, of course, before I broke things off. No sense wasting a perfectly good finale to the shittiest relationship I’d ever gotten myself into.
With a strangling grip of my shaft, I slid my hand up to the tip, flicking the studs of my apadravya piercing, and back down again, remembering how hard she’d worked for it that night. Even thought she could entice me by playing with herself beneath the short skirt she’d worn as she sucked me off. My stomach tightened as I squeezed harder, remembering the anger as I’d watched her, imagining her doing the same thing to that little prick at the bar. Behind shuttered lids, I recalled her puppy dog eyes staring up at me, a silent plea for my forgiveness, and I stroked my cock faster, muscles tightening with the urge to come all over her face. Only when she opened her eyes, they weren’t the hazel I remembered, but bright amber. An intoxicating whiskey.
Nicoleta.
I clenched my jaw, willing those thoughts of her away, but it was too late. Warm jets of cum shot out of me, coating my hand as I pumped out the last few seconds of my climax.
A shudder rippled down my spine, and my muscles turned soft and weak, my head dizzy.
I sat up and peeled off my T-shirt, wiping the cum from my hands, and threw it across the room, disgusted with myself. Knees pulled up, I gripped either side of my skull, feeling like a dirty prick for having rubbed one out to thoughts of the girl sucking me off. After all she’d been through.
“What kind of piece of shit—”
A hard thunk carried through the walls, interrupting my thoughts, and I lifted my head. At the chasing silence, I scrambled out of bed and padded down the hall to Nicoleta’s room. Pressing my ear to the door, I listened for a moment, before opening it a crack.
The bed stood empty.
The flutter of curtains had my attention shooting toward the window, propped wide open.
“Fuck!” I darted across the room and slammed into the window ledge, before peering down the fire escape, where Nicoleta hobbled along each stair below, in nothing but my oversized T-shirt.
The moment she hit the alley, she tripped and fell to her knees, but she got back up, stumbling into a weak jog. I spun around and nabbed a hoodie I’d left on the chair the night before.
The cracked wooden frame scraped across my back as I hopped through the window in nothing but my pants. At a run, I rounded each stairwell, leaping from landing to landing, until I hit the last and vaulted over the railing onto the wet pavement. Rain pummeled my eyes like tiny bullets, as I came around the building, gaze darting left then right. Through the shadowy night, I caught sight of her a block up, and sprinted down the sidewalk toward her.
“Nicoleta! Nicoleta!” My bare feet pounded against the wet cement. I caught up her at the mouth of the next alley, and screams echoed through the streets when I gripped tight to her shoulders.
She wriggled and squirmed as I banded an arm around her. “Let me go! Help! Somebody, help!”
Slapping a hand over her mouth, I tucked the hoodie under my arm and nudged her into the dark alley, where I pinned her up against the wall. “I’m not going to hurt you. Understand?”
“You’re … planning to sell me!” she screamed over the top of my restraining hand.
Confusion hit me, and the undoubtedly dumbfounded look on my face must’ve settled her fight because some of the spit and fire dimmed in her eyes. I lowered my hand, realizing why she’d resisted me so much. “What?”
“The doctor. Sh-sh-she examined me, right? You’re selling me?”
“The fu—no.” Tightening my grip on her arm, I shook my head. “No, I’m not selling you.”
“Then, what’s the tattoo all about? On your arm?”
Should’ve realized she’d have seen the same mark on the bastards who’d abused her all those months. “Look, I’ll explain everything. I promise. But I need to get you warm and back in bed.”
“You okay, Miss?” The man I recognized from the party store stood at the entrance of the alley, his posture stiff and fists balled in defense.
She looked up at me for a second, then nodded, much to my relief. “I’m okay.”
“You sure?”
With her second nod, he disappeared back around the corner.
I wrapped the zip hoodie around her before lifting her up into my arms.
Shivering and curled into my chest, she weighed almost nothing, as I carried her back to the fire escape and up the stairs to the window. Wet rain puddled on the floor when she climbed inside, and I followed after her.
“T-t-tell me,” she stuttered, as I settled her into the bed, pulling the blankets up over her.
“I’m not going to hurt you, and I’m not selling you. I give you my word. Get some rest. In the morning, I’ll tell you everything you want to know.”
“Everything?”
Standing over her, I nodded and pushed a strand of hair from her face so I could see her eyes. “Everything.”
9
Nicoleta
Shadows of passing cars danced across the wall I stared off at, desperate for sleep. Without my pills, that’d be impossible. A craving hooked my stomach, yanking down into my thighs, and radiated through my muscles. Deep and brimming, with the kind of ache that wasn’t necessarily painful, but unrelenting.
I needed something.
Through a dizzy haze, I rose to my feet and tiptoed across the bedroom to the door. I’d seen him carrying a bottle of those pills. He’d given them to me in small doses during my withdrawals, and I had to believe they were somewhere in the apartment.
I slunk down the hall, stopping at an opened bedroom door on the right. Inside, Dax lay on his stomach, face buried into a pillow stuffed beneath his massive tattooed bicep.
Asleep.
A faint creak chased my steps when I kept on toward the open living room and adjacent kitchen. Rummaging through cupboards produced nothing but a bag of Doritos, whiskey, cans of chicken broth that left me silently gagging, and a deck of playing cards.
The refrigerator housed some strawberries, blueberries, cucumbers and carrots—stuff he’d tried to feed me between bowls of broth. Beside them sat rows of bottled beer and a small carton of milk. None of it appealing to whatever appetite was gnawing at me.
“Damn it,” I whispered, my hand trembling as I closed the door to the fridge.
I made my way down to the bathroom at the end of the hallway, passing Dax’s sleeping form once again. Avoiding my reflection in the mirror, I opened the medicine cabinet and pulled out some pill bottle from the shelf inside. Not the small pink pills I’d come to crave, but tiny green ones inside an unlabeled bottle that could’ve been anything.
I didn’t care. I needed the ache, that intense craving for something I couldn’t pinpoint, to go away.
Flutters of excitement tickled my chest as I twisted the cap and dumped two pills onto my palm, before setting the bottle back onto the shelf. Standing over the sink, I let the water run for a second, and as I raised my cupped hand to pop the pills into my mouth, a hard smack against my knuckles sent them flying into the adjacent bathtub.
I whipped my head toward where Dax stood in the doorway, face tinged with fury. “Those were fucking Fentanyl, one milligram tabs. Street grade, which means those two could’ve killed you just now.”
“I need something. I’m … feeling sick.”
He reached out for me, but I swatted his hand away. On his second reach, he managed to wrap his arms around me, and my heels scratched across the old tiles as he dragged me out of the room.
Squirming and kicking, I fought to get a
way, while he tugged me along, toward his room.
“I’m not fucking you!” I snapped my head back, which he dodged, and jerked in his arms, but to no avail.
That steel grip only tightened around me as he carried me into the dark bedroom. “You’re not fucking me. And I’m not fucking you. I’m gonna stay with you through the night.”
One firm shove from behind knocked me onto the bed. I bounced forward to get away, but his flat palm between my breasts prodded me backward, and he slid onto the bed beside me, blocking my escape. “What you’re craving is touch. That’s how the shit works. Chemicals are released when someone touches you.” Arms banded around me, he tugged me into his body, his hard chest pressed against my back.
I wriggled and squirmed, my heart feeling as if it might explode through my ribs with all the effort to fight him. For what seemed like a half hour, I twitched and kicked in his arms, until exhaustion settled in. How the hell he held onto me so tightly that whole time was a mystery. Like the guy was made of hard iron and steel.
Finally stilling in his arms, I breathed hard to settle the pounding inside my chest. And that’s when I felt him. Really felt him. The soothing strokes against my arm that sent goosebumps across my flesh. The tickle of skin against mine, and the euphoria that followed. Heaven, if such a place existed. My eyes grew heavy, my breathing calmed. Skin prickled with the relaxation that warmed my muscles, as though I’d been wrapped inside a wonderfully snug cocoon.
He knew exactly what I’d needed.
“Dax,” I said, my voice weak with ecstasy. “How’d you know?”
“I’ve had bad nights on just about every drug out there.” Even his deep voice vibrating inside his chest and against my back felt incredible. As if every part of his body was some kind of tool designed to delight the senses.
“Why d’you take lethal doses of Fentanyl?”
“I don’t anymore. I got clean.”
“Why keep them?”
“Prove that I can. That I don’t need them.”
“Don’t you?” I asked, breathing in the scent of him from the pillow below me.
“I hope not.” His legs brushed mine when he stretched and shifted on the bed behind me, never once loosening his grip. Not a single inch of the man was soft, every part of him that touched me a rugged mass of iron pressing down on my bones. “Holy fuck, are you stubborn and feisty as all hell. You’ve got me worn out,” he said on a yawn.
I fought the smile tugging at my lips. I was stubborn. And my feisty nature happened to be the one thing Dmitry had always admired about me. There was typically no compromise. No matter how powerful the man, I rarely backed down.
I rode my bike up to the iron gate, most of which was hidden behind thick green vines that stretched half a block in either direction. The ginormous house sat back across two football fields of a yard, impossible to get anyone’s attention. How the hell could I show up if I couldn’t get in?
Through the skinny branches, I scanned over a box whose outer cover had rusted a bit, and opened it to a pad of numbers and a red button beside a speaker. With one quick press, I bent forward and said, “hello!”
Waited.
At no answer, I held the button down, and a heavily accented voice thundered from the speakers. “What do you want, kid?”
“I’m here to see Dmitry. He asked me to come here.”
The line went silent for nearly a minute, before the gates clicked and squealed, opening to the long and winding drive with a beautifully manicured lawn at either side of it. Probably took five minutes, peddling fast, before I reached the fancy brick steps and popped out my kickstand, while I took in the huge wooden door.
As I climbed the stairs, it opened to the familiar face of Dmitry. Another man waited alongside him and looked like something out of a barbarian movie. Guy must’ve been over six feet, easily, his arms the width of my whole body.
Standing in their pristine suits, it seemed strange that the two men would want anything to do with a kid like me. Felt like I should’ve been nothing but a small ant beneath their shoes, but with their arms crossed, faces all scrunched up mad, I got the feeling I was definitely on their shit-list—somewhere I suspected I didn’t want to be.
Like the two times before, Dmitry wore black leather gloves, which was one thing out in public, but really weird in his own home.
The moment I stepped inside the house, I could’ve sworn I’d stepped into another world, with all the marble and chandeliers shining with extravagance. I’d never been in a place so fancy before. Not even when mom cleaned houses for a bit after my dad left.
“This is the one I told you about, Aleksey,” Dmitry said to the giant beside him. “Bold little shit.”
The giant responded in another language, and both men laughed, as a short, older woman waddled up on a limp.
Dmitry’s stony eyes turned to me. “You’ll work with Donata here.” He rested one of those gloved hands on the older woman’s shoulder. “Do whatever she tells you. She’ll make sure you have lunch and dinner before you leave.”
“Dinner?” I crossed my arms over my chest, the heat of panic burning my cheeks. “I have to be back before dark.”
“You stole three grand from me. You’ll be back when I tell you.”
“I don’t …. I don’t like riding my bike in the dark.”
Dmitry crossed his arms over the front of himself, too, looking every bit like a mafia guy from the movies. “My driver will take you home.”
“What about my bike?”
“It’s a piece of shit. I’ll arrange to have a new bike sent to your house. I don’t want any excuses for you not being here on time.”
I scowled up at him. How dare he even talk about throwing away my bike. It was my bike! “You …. You can’t just throw my bike away.”
“It looks like it was thrown away at the time you inherited it.” His eyes scanned me down and up. “Donata will assist in getting you new clothes, as well. I carry out meetings on occasion, and I don’t need you looking like an orphan child running around here.”
Technically, I wasn’t old enough to work, at all, and I didn’t know how he planned to explain a child maid to his business people.
“How much are you paying me?” At the raise of his brow, I cleared my throat. “I mean, so I know how long I have to work to pay it off.”
“Eight dollars an hour. At eight hours a day, you should be able to have it paid off in a little under two months. Just in time for school.”
“Ten,” I argued, as he turned to walk away.
He craned his head, and the incredulous stare on his face had my knees knocking. “What did you say?”
“I know I’m worth ten an hour.”
His tongue slid across his bottom lip, and he looked to the giant at his side, spoke in that foreign language from before. Both men laughed again.
“Ten, and you don’t talk behind my back in whatever language that is. It’s rude.”
“So is stealing.”
I let my gaze make an exaggerated sweep of his mansion. “Looks like you can afford a little charity once in a while.”
The pop of his jaw must’ve been my words gnashing between his teeth as he chewed on them. Could’ve only been five seconds that passed in what felt like sixty. “Fine. Ten an hour.” He leaned forward and prodded a finger into my chest. “You better be worth it, kid.”
For the next hour, I lay beside Dax, focusing on the muscles in his arms that had gone slack, yet the contact with him still had my skin buzzing with contentment. I could’ve left and gone back to my room, but I didn’t.
I lay there listening to his slow and steady breathing and closed my eyes.
As I did so, something clicked. The distorted fragments came together in perfect clarity, as the fog from my slowly encroaching sobriety lifted just enough to see what I couldn’t before.
What’s your purpose, Nicoleta?
My eyes flipped open. Suddenly, I remembered.
10
; Dax
One arm wrapped around a pharmacy bag, which held Nicoleta’s antibiotics, some vitamins and a pack of smokes, I clicked off the phone call and climbed the stairs to the apartment. Doc Aikens had called to let me know that all Nicoleta’s lab work had come back negative, including the pregnancy test she’d performed. The antibiotics would clear up the Staph infection she’d apparently developed on her leg. Nothing too serious, in spite of how it looked. I’d made a point to let her know how she’d progressed over the last couple days, getting stronger by the hour, which meant she was on the homestretch.
The first few days getting off Hedonic were straight up hell, but after a week, the effects tended to lessen dramatically.
The apartment stood silent when I opened the door and made my way across the small space toward her bedroom.
She lay facing the window across the room, as I entered.
“How are you feeling?” I set down the bag, noticing the way she held her arms slightly crooked, which might’ve suggested some stiffness. The sweats and fresh T-shirt still lay draped on the chair, where I’d set them out for her before running out to the store.
“Better today.” She rubbed the faint markings reddening her skin, from the restraints she’d worn the day before, and kicked herself backward toward the wall, knees to her chest. “What day is it?”
Good question. The days seemed to merge into each other so much, even I didn’t know. I tugged the phone from my pocket to check. “October second,” I said, stuffing the phone back into my jeans.
“You’re one of them.”
Frowning, I crossed my arms over my chest. “One of whom?”
“Their little circle.” She lifted her chin, eyes cast toward my arm. “That’s why you wear their tattoo?”
“I’m not one of them, I can promise you that.” For fuck sakes, the thought of that made me ill.
“Then, why do you wear their mark? Why would you brand yourself with it?”
