‘I’m pissed at you. I’m not pissed at him,’ she said with her lips on his pectoral.
‘Do what you want.’
If there had ever been words of water to dowse her fire he’d just discovered them. Mating here in this place after such a fraught day she’d hoped would bring them both solace, but he couldn’t be less interested. In all their time together, he’d never refused her.
Tonight, he wasn’t denying her, but her lover had never been disinterested like this. His erection didn’t comfort her because his body reacted to hers on instinct. The mind in that unyielding body was constricted with a burden that he shouldered alone.
Tucking herself under his chin, Rushe smoothed her hair away from his stubble, but the caress wasn’t familiar. Lying together here in silence, neither confessed to still being awake, but it took a long time to find any kind of relaxation. In the end, only the pulse of his heart against her ribs lulled Flick to rest.
A sharp, obtrusive bell droned. Before she opened her eyes, Flick was elbowed aside, and Rushe was up off the bed and out of the room. Blinking through the darkness, she saw a small red light above the door flash, but the bell had ceased.
Activity from somewhere beyond that open door sounded animated, so she slipped off the bed and retrieved the tee-shirt Rushe had cast aside earlier. Popping her head through the hole, she got her arms into the sleeves and pulled it down to cover her body to where it stopped on her, mid-thigh.
Shouting and movement grew louder and more frantic, so Flick crept out of the bedroom on her tiptoes and snuck down the corridor, safe in the knowledge that she’d be concealed by the curtain at the end of the passage.
‘Don’t want to hear it,’ a female voice, which sounded like Lilah, called out.
‘No! She misunderstood, I wasn’t—‘
‘You’re out!’
If Rushe’s role was to look after these women, then part of the job description would be to eject patrons who broke the rules. Letting her curiosity get the better of her, Flick pulled the curtain aside just enough to see what was going on.
Rushe’s back blocked most of her view of the action, because he was going through the door toward the shop front. From the racket, he was clearly dragging the unruly client with him, and the woman continued to berate the guy on the journey through the shop.
Flick glanced at a man seated in the corner who was pretending to read a magazine while not so discreetly trying to watch the action.
The din stopped abruptly when a door slammed, then a few seconds later Rushe’s arm came into view. He was still in the entrance space between shop and brothel, again with his back to her.
‘You ok?’ Rushe asked.
Such a show of placation was unlike her lover, so Flick leaned out to try and see who he was talking to, but his body shielded the scene. So Flick edged out, letting the curtain flutter shut behind her. Rushe took a step backward to lean on the doorframe, and she momentarily worried about being caught out here. But then, she reminded herself that plenty of women had occupied this chamber in far more revealing attire than she was wearing now.
Also, if they were going to be here for an undefined period of time, Flick didn’t plan to spend all of those minutes and hours locked away out of sight. So she settled her weight back against the wall, without intention of cowering when she was discovered.
‘I told you he looked like the type,’ Lilah said. ‘Candy has handled worse than that, Rushe. She’ll be fine.’
He edged aside to let the two women, Lilah and a bleach blonde woman who wore heavy eye make-up, enter this reception.
When the three were fully in the reception area again, the john seated in the corner spoke up. ‘How much for her?’
‘She’s done,’ Lilah said, putting an arm around the bleach blonde.
‘Not her,’ the guy said. ‘Her.’ When the client nodded in her direction, Flick’s eyebrows rose because she assumed his lack of previous acknowledgement meant that he hadn’t noticed her.
Lilah and the bleach blonde turned, and Rushe in his own curiosity did too. But Flick didn’t face the wrath of her lover, she just smiled at the patron. ‘I’m off duty. Come back another night and maybe you’ll get lucky.’
‘You fucking—‘
‘Rushe!’ Flick asserted, when her love took one stride toward the hapless customer.
This time when Rushe’s attention snapped around, she looked him square in the eye. With hope that her own glare conveyed her vehemence, she spun around and disappeared through the curtain and back up the hall to their room.
For half a second, she wasn’t sure that he had followed, but after a few harsh footfalls he was in the room and slamming the door. Clouds of grey crashed thunder around them, and that blank stare gave her chills. Now he was angry.
‘What the fuck did you think you were doing—‘
‘There were plenty of other women out there yesterday!’ Flick said.
‘And if that guy had decided to take what he wanted while I was busy?’
‘You were busy for thirty seconds,’ she said. ‘If you had heard me call for you then you’d have come.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Because I do!’
‘Take off the shirt.’
‘Now you want me naked? Why? Because another man showed interest? You want to scent me?’
With three strides, Rushe’s chest met her nose and she leaned back to peer up at him. The nightstand at her back prevented retreat, not that she would run away from his attempt to intimidate.
‘I want to see what you’ve got on under there, what protected my playground from that asshole’s reach?’
‘Your playground? You weren’t interested in playing, or talking, or doing much of anything earlier.’
‘Take it off,’ he snarled, his lips curling against his gritted teeth.
Flick maintained her defiance because this was not a time to flinch under his scrutiny. When he grabbed handfuls of the tee-shirt at her neck she didn’t so much as twitch.
The clouds grew thicker around him and the grate of ripping cotton scratched her skin when he tore the fabric off her body. When he separated the hem, he thrust the material away, casting it to the floor and leaving her nude.
The span of his two hands reached around her lower ribcage, and pushing the pads of his thumbs to her sternum, he rubbed upward until he palmed her breasts. Still, she maintained eye contact.
‘Your pussy is bare.’
‘That’s right.’
‘You’ve got a mouth on you, whore.’ The words were barely whispered, and the gas in his irises swirled when his fingers shifted.
‘You want me to do something with it, Lover?’ she teased.
Anger collided with the tingling in her loins, which shimmered north when his hands shrank until his fingertips fooled with the sensitive apexes of her breasts.
‘You’re gonna do what you’re told.’
‘Maybe,’ she said, triggering a growl in Rushe. ‘Try it, thug, ask me to wrap my mouth around your big, hard cock.’
‘You’re a filthy girl; all you can think about is sucking dicks.’
Deliberately, Flick shook her head to cause her hair to flutter forward over her shoulders and tickle his fondling hands.
‘Not plural, yours... all I think about is sucking on your dick.’
His next inhale clenched his fingers, which drew his hands away from her body. Taking pressure from one foot Flick dipped to lower herself, but Rushe caught her elbow, preventing her descent to her knees.
‘Lover?’
Sinking down to sit on the bed, Rushe took her into his lap. ‘When that bell goes off it means trouble.’ Parting his fingers, he grazed them through her hair.
‘That’s why you kept your jeans on,’ she murmured.
Flick should have known better than to read anything sinister in that deed. But Rushe could be such a difficult man to interpret that she had learned the importance of picking up on the subtle nuance of his be
haviour and body language.
‘You don’t leave this room naked, and when that bell goes off you stay here.’
‘But—‘
‘Flick, if I’m watching you then I’m not watching them.’
Reading his hidden meaning, she slid her hand the width of his shoulders to rest her arm around him.
‘You don’t have to prioritise me over them. I can look after myself. If it comes down to making a choice—’
The sting of his grip bit into her thigh. ‘You’ll stay here, if I have to tie you up—‘
‘You don’t have to worry about me. Look how far we’ve come together.’
‘I take care of what’s mine,’ he said.
‘So do I.’
Drifting closer, Flick’s lips met his but the compression eased when he reclined and held her shoulders to maintain the distance between them.
‘Sweetheart, we don’t wanna do that.’
Without meeting her gaze, he exhaled, and then lay back and gathered her into their usual sleeping pose.
‘You don’t want to have sex with me?’
‘I’m working. Go to sleep.’
Rushe didn’t refuse her. Whatever was different here, Flick didn’t like it. The only time he used the endearment of “sweetheart” was when he spoke to a female he didn’t know, or when he was trying to convey, falsely, to others that he and Flick were strangers.
Working had never stopped him from mounting her given the opportunity in the past; his change in attitude here gave Flick a mystery that she would have to solve on her own.
Chapter Seven
The morning in this place was quiet. Stillness reeked from every corner and crevice. Rushe had been absent from the room when Flick awoke, but there had been a paper bag next to the bed with a breakfast bagel in it. Written on the bag in Rushe’s handwriting was one word, “stay”. After showering, dressing, and sitting alone for an hour, she decided to venture out, if for no other reason than to locate her missing man.
Reception was vacant, and the door to the passageway that Lilah had emerged from last night was locked, which prevented Flick from exploring behind it. She wondered at how many women resided through that door, imprisoned, and ready to be exploited at Silver’s will or whim.
Testing the door for the shop, she was surprised to find it open. With no other options, Flick proceeded forward. Since she hadn’t yet seen another soul, she wasn’t content to go back and sit alone in their room.
Slinking through the beads, Flick observed that the shop was manned today. The bleach blonde woman from the night before sat behind a narrow glass-fronted counter, poring over a magazine she had spread open next to the register.
‘Rushe ain’t here,’ she said briefly, looking at Flick when she noticed her.
The blonde didn’t so much as twist in her stool, she just licked a fingertip and scraped one page out of the way to reveal the next one.
‘I’m Flick,’ she said, edging closer to the counter, which was at the other end of the same wall as this doorway.
‘Candy.’
‘I hope you’re alright, after your altercation last night.’
Candy tipped her head round to look at Flick. ‘A john tried to take what he didn’t pay for, no big deal.’
‘Good.’
‘You one of Silver’s girls?’
‘No,’ Flick said.
‘Who’s paying Rushe?’
If Candy was implying that Rushe could be some kind of gigolo for her, Flick had to smile. ‘For sex?’
‘That’s not Rushe’s gig. He’s security. So who is it? Your husband? Your brother? You come from money, don’t you?’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘Rushe is expensive. If you’re not working to pay off a debt to Silver, then Rushe is protecting you from something, so you’ve gotta be in serious shit.’
‘Are you curious? Or are you worried about what trouble I might have brought here?’
Candy grinned until she snorted out a laugh. ‘You haven’t known Rushe for long if you’re still worried about trouble coming for you. Nothing gets past him. If you’re in danger after Rushe has taken your case, then Rushe is already dead and you don’t stand a chance against whatever beat him.’
So Rushe hadn’t told these women of their relationship. That in itself wasn’t surprising, as Rushe had taught Flick never to give more details about anything than was absolutely necessary. Also, being that she was Rushe’s weak spot, when people found out that she could be used against him they were both put in jeopardy.
‘He’s here to look after things.’
‘Yeah,’ Candy said. ‘This is Rushe’s home.’
Flick hadn’t expected that declaration. ‘He lives here?’
‘Did until a few months back.’
‘Why did he leave?’ Questioning anyone about her love felt dishonest, but Rushe had taught her the importance of seeking answers when the opportunity to find them arose.
‘Some guy needed help I guess, Silver had a buddy who wanted something. Rushe only really does his thing for women, so I guess it was some guy’s girlfriend or something. We didn’t know what, ‘cept we knew Rushe would be back, can’t keep him away from Tawny for long.’
That name had been mentioned on their arrival. ‘But she’s not here now.’
‘She’ll be back,’ Candy said, and her smile became sly. ‘Rushe is more than you can handle, lady, so don’t even think about it.’
‘About what?’
‘Walking on the wild side.’
‘Why would you think I—‘
‘Tawny would claw out your eyes,’ Candy said.
‘Rushe lived here... with her?’
The front door opened, causing a grating electric buzz. Still trying to comprehend what Candy had said, Flick anticipated Rushe’s entrance, but it was Cody who came in alone.
‘What do you want?’ Candy barked. ‘You’re to sit outside, that’s what Rushe said.’
‘Got a visitor.’
‘Not open for business yet,’ Candy said. ‘I’m watching the shop, and she ain’t trading here. ’
‘This is business, not pleasure.’
Every muscle in Flick’s body tensed in unison at the resonance of that evilly familiar accent coming from behind Cody. As subtly as she could muster, Flick relaxed her hand toward her back pocket when Cody stepped to the side.
‘Simone,’ Flick said. Because she was concentrating hard on the eyes of the sleek and sophisticated blonde, Flick was only partially aware of Candy rising from her perch.
‘Where’s your bodyguard?’ Simone asked.
‘None of your business,’ Flick replied. ‘What do you want?’
‘I am ‘ere to fulfil a promise,’ Simone said, and if she was trying to be friendly the French mademoiselle missed the mark. ‘To do you a kindness, and to explain how you can make amends and secure a resolution to this unfortunate situation for all involved.’
‘You weren’t interested in doing me any favours when we first met, so what’s changed? Did you panic when you realised the orange jumpsuit clashed with your bottle-blonde hair colour?’
‘You Americans and your sense of humour,’ Simone said. ‘I was not arrested. I was a victim, just like you.’
‘Really? ‘Cause I seem to remember you were on the other side of the barricaded door that kept me prisoner.’
‘Not everything is as it originally seems.’
‘You’re not going to reel me in,’ Flick said, comforted by the lump of Rushe’s folded pocket knife indenting her rump. ‘You were no victim then, and you’re no victim now.’
‘This is not the place to talk, and we must talk.’
‘I’m not interested in catching up,’ she said, and twisted away to aim for a retreat toward the brothel.
‘Where do you plan to go, Felicity? Back into that hovel?’
The thud of the main entrance door catching on the stopper that held it open made Flick cast her attention back around. Simone remai
ned in the same spot, but two men, of at least six foot, came through the entry access and stood as her wings.
‘You will come with me,’ Simone said.
Flick’s smile burst on instinct, and she exhaled a laugh. ‘You’ll have to kill me first.’
‘That would not be in any of our interests.’
‘I walk out that door with you, and I know exactly what’s on the other side of it.’
‘You’re not a pawn anymore, Felicity,’ Simone said, with her own mocking smile. ‘You’re a participant now. You are not a game piece to be manipulated, you are a player who may direct the pieces.’
‘This isn’t a game; lives are at stake. You threaten us and then expect us to follow your orders like sheep? Your family is lethal, they’re cruel and insane.’
‘And yours is in peril,’ Simone said. ‘If you refuse me my men will retrieve you, but you are not in physical danger. We have to talk; we need you.’
‘Need me?’
‘I have a mutually beneficial proposition to put to you. It will resolve the situation for us all.’
No escape lay behind Flick, since the reception was the only place she could run to. The women were locked up. The bathroom had no window, and the only windows in their room were fifteen feet up and only a foot high. Getting away from here was not an option.
‘You tell me I’m not a pawn, and then you try to hijack me.’
‘Rushe wants confirmation that the girl is alive. You may see her now, and then we will talk. After that you will be allowed to leave and return here. Holding you against your will would serve no purpose for us. You are unwieldy and inconvenient, not at all obedient or compliant. Do you wish to see the girl or not?’
Serendipity. Rushe had told Flick that he’d made the request to see her. ‘You don’t need her.’ Though in truth, Serendipity was the ace in the Merciers’ hand.
‘If that was true, we’d have killed her,’ Simone said.
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