Broke and Famous

by Elizabeth Gannon

  She turned around to glare at him, anger fading away to something like concern or pity. “I know what you’re doin’ too, Thraex, that’s the problem.” She spun on her heel and began marching back up the stairs to her room. “I never should have left your father!” She proclaimed loudly, like it was her final word on the matter.

  “Father was keeping you as a slave, Mama!” He reminded her in exasperation. “He kept you naked and chained to a stone wall!”

  “That’s still better than living in Reichelt Park!” She shouted back with dramatic vehemence, holding up a finger towards the sky. “With these damn Westgates!”

  Sasha suddenly appeared beside him, watching his mother exit. “What’s wrong with Zhanna?” She asked, sounding concerned. “Is she okay? Why was she yelling?”

  Kurtz walked past them towards the front doors, looking unconcerned. “Oh, that old woman’s crazy. Every day she’s screaming like the aliens are here with their probes and she’s stop number one.”

  Thraex glared at him, debating with himself about how angry Sasha would be if he smashed her brother’s head into the wall, and how much damage the man’s skull would do to the wood paneling if he tried.

  “Thraex?” Sasha asked again, sounding vaguely concerned. “Everything okay?”

  He shook his head to clear it, then refocused on the woman.

  Sasha Westgate was… amazing.

  He’d always thought so.

  The daughter of an engineer and an astronaut, she was an adventurer, inventor, scientist, and former model. Her honey-colored hair was done in an out-of-style 60s bouffant, and she wore pretty little dresses and lace gloves, like she was constantly off to a church picnic somewhere sunny and fine.

  All 5’6” of her was always ready for anything the world and the multiverse threw at her.

  She was truly remarkable to behold. Sometimes, he just enjoyed watching her.

  He always had.

  That particular hobby… well… it had basically ruined them.

  But he didn’t regret it.

  These days though, she was more a distracted and slightly frazzled woman. Down on her luck, with a horrible history with… everything. Love, career, society. She’d had and lost and been laughed at. But Sasha was a tough woman and it would take more than that to keep her down for long.

  He could see that, even if she couldn’t.

  He had very definite plans for Sasha Westgate, plans which were in addition to and far beyond whatever it was his mother believed he felt for the woman.

  That was all part of being a betrayer.

  But he had no intention of warning Sasha of that, obviously. She’d find out.

  In time.

  “My mama is just a little overset about breakfast, Miss Sasha, no cause for concern.” He assured the woman calmly, busying himself with rotating the cushions on the lobby’s vintage mid-century yellow floral couches.

  Sasha made the “hmm” sound she always made when she was recording something in her incredible brain. “Okay, just so long as everything’s alright.”

  She absently straightened her retro A-line dress which was patterned with hundreds of little Westgate symbols. The small action caused the colorful fabric to move over the graceful and feminine lines of her body, and lust hit Thraex like a hammer.

  Dr. Susan Westgate had entered her daughter in all kinds of pageants growing up, and now Sasha was perpetually poised and smiling serenely, moving around with such gentle grace that she barely disturbed the air when she went by.

  She looked like a beauty queen. But smarter.

  Her body was feminine and dainty and alluring, with long legs all the way to heaven, sparklingly friendly eyes, and the most magnificent breasts he could possibly imagine.

  She was a trifle on the skinny side, sure, but he’d tasted her mama’s cooking, so that was no surprise. Mamere had taught him how to boil crawfish the old way though, so he was reasonably sure he could fill her out some, given the opportunity.

  Sasha had appeared out of the mysterious darkness beyond his cell, a cell which had been his home for long years of isolation, and she’d made his young body instantly hard. For the first time in his horrible, empty life. At the time, he hadn’t even known what was happening to him, it was like some kind of mysterious force had taken over his body and was growing a new damn bone between his legs. He thought he was dying. Like his blood was on fire and looking for an escape.

  Looking at Sasha Westgate for the first time had made him so hard it had hurt.

  She made him that hard every time he looked at her, truth told, and today was no exception.

  Whether she hated him or not, whether she was talking to him or not, whether her family would allow him near her or not, whether they were step-siblings or not… his entire life was characterized by wanting Sasha Westgate.

  To an almost humiliating extent.

  He defined himself by her, and he was positive that even if he never saw her again in his entire life… his last thoughts would be of her.

  He wanted her warm body pressed under him, soft and yielding and offering him sanctuary. He wanted to pin that sweet, feminine little goddess down and lose himself in her, teaching her the consequences of leaving him for all those years. There was an almost violent desperation in how much he wanted her, like a drowning man frantically grabbing onto the one thing he needed to keep his head above water.

  But, Sasha being Sasha, Thraex had never told her any of that either, because it would doubtlessly scare the ever-lovin’ shit out of her.

  She didn’t really like him. She had never really liked him, even when he was a kid. She tolerated him, but that was about it. So telling her that he often dreamt about spanking her pretty little ass red, and then fucking her sweaty naked body until dawn… probably wouldn’t help matters.

  He imagined the scene for the millionth time in his life, not even bothering to hide it as his eyes traveled over her body and dwelt on the places he most longed to explore.

  Sasha rolled her eyes, shifting her hips slightly as his gaze settled on the unseen but no-doubt mouthwatering triangle of sparkling blonde curls between her legs, which shyly concealed her delicate folds beneath.

  All gods offered their own heavens. And Sasha Westgate’s was right there. A warm and tight eternal reward, offered by a luminous goddess to only the most worthy.

  Which… wasn’t Thraex.

  He couldn’t see her naked body through her dress, but he knew it was there. Tempting him.

  In his mind, he could see everything that was under that woman’s demure little skirt.

  He mentally stripped off her clothes and used his hand to spread her channel open, slipping his fingers into her hot, tight dampness to judge how wet she was and how much of him she’d be able to take…

  Shit… he could almost taste her sweetness on his tongue...

  “Do we really have time for this, Thraex?” She asked, cutting off his wonderful thoughts and sending him back to reality, her voice sounding a little huskier than usual.

  “Prolly not, no, but I’m hopeful you’ll find a way to squeeze me in, Darlin’.” He winked at her.

  She gave an aggravated sigh. “For a man who is so adamant about others behaving professionally, you really could make more of an attempt to be a better boss.”

  “Is that what you want, Miss Sasha?” He dropped the last couch cushion back into place, then prowled closer to her, his erection throbbing and pressing so painfully against his zipper that it threatened to break through the damn thing and spring free. “Me to boss you around some?” He leaned closer to her, enjoying the gentle scent of her vintage perfume. “Tell you what to do? ‘Cause I got some fine ideas, chère. I know juuuuust the kind of orders I’d like to give a sweet lil’ thing like you...”

  She licked her lips, the swell of her breasts rising and falling more rapidly. “I just want to get out of here.” She breathed.

  “Me too.” He agreed. “The job I need you to do for me has got no place be
in’ done in the lobby...”

  She cleared her throat and took a step away, breaking eye contact. “I have no interest in doing anything with you but the job you mentioned. I want to go do the job, so that I can get paid, and I can leave this place behind.” She reminded him in a clipped tone. “I have no intention of returning to this life or to science in this city.”

  “Whatever you say, Miss Sasha.” He shifted his stance, trying to ignore the excruciating pain of his cock mashing into his fly. “Whatever you say.”

  He’d rather look at Sasha and endure that pain, then be without her and not have the issue, because no other woman in existence had ever made him this hard.

  Thraex was perfectly happy in this dimension. He’d come a long way in it and he was always trying to better his position here. But he knew his place. He was under no misconceptions about that. Sasha Westgate was off-limits and always had been. She was completely beyond him.

  Dr. Westgate had given him a whole talk once. She’d been real polite about it. All proper and dignified, as befitting any lady talkin’ to someone beneath her.

  Thraex might have been living with Dr. Susan Westgate for years at the time, but that didn’t mean he’d ever be one of her kind.

  Thraex was an “other.”

  He wasn’t fine Reichelt Park folk.

  The woman hadn’t liked the way he looked at Sasha, and she wanted to make sure his dirty hands didn’t soil her little princess.

  That’s how this place was. Sasha’s family and her friends and her line of work… they had all taught him early on that he was the help. Just a concubine’s filthy bastard from some dimension that most of them had never even heard of and never wanted to visit. He was disreputable, dangerous, and deeply untrustworthy. Thraex would never be allowed anywhere near their precious darling little girl. Not if the Westgates and the rest of Reichelt Park had anything to say about it.

  Sasha was clean and brilliant and poised and perfect.

  She always had been. Everyone could see it.

  She was a beauty queen and one of the smartest people on the planet.

  Sasha had everything, and could do everything.

  Sasha had been the apple of her daddy’s eye from the moment she was born.

  Professor Westgate had nearly blinded Thraex’s eye with the broken shards of a Westgate Foundation mug as it impacted Thraex’s skull.

  …Not that Thraex was holding a grudge about that. Because that would be silly.

  “My Sasha will do fantastic things,” Sasha’s mother had told Thraex, “and bring even more renown to the Westgate name.” Thraex should “busy himself with cleaning the toilets in the Westgate Foundation building,” because that was responsibility enough for “someone of his dubious background.”

  It had taken him six months to figure out what the word “dubious” meant.

  Then he’d looked it up in his dictionary, and had spent the next two days crying.

  That had hurt. Hurt worse than the incident with Professor Westgate and the mug.

  But it was the last time he had ever cried.

  Thraex didn’t blame the woman for that though. Dr. Westgate had just been trying to protect her daughter and keep some damn fool kid with a hard-on away from her. Thraex would have done the same thing had he been in her designer shoes.

  Thraex had no business even being allowed in the same room as someone like Sasha Westgate. He knew that better than anyone, since he knew firsthand the kind of person he was and the kinds of wicked things he had always wanted to do to the girl.

  Blaming Susan Westgate for that would be silly.

  Thraex had had similar conversations with people at the Freedom Squad. And the Horizons Academy. And with Sasha’s daddy. And with innumerable people in their polite “civilized society” over the years.

  He knew the score.

  They’d been born in separate dimensions, they were from vastly different social spheres, she was a decade older, and on paper, they were step-siblings.

  There was no overcoming that. Ever. Not in this town.

  No, Thraex knew his place.

  But that didn’t mean he couldn’t rejoice in the fact that the Westgate’s little princess was momentarily consigned to life in the dregs with him. Not that he’d ever been jealous of her, just that… Sasha was so perfect and pleasant and made everything look so damned easy, that there was a tiny piece of him which wasn’t exactly crying at seeing her have trouble with something.

  Everything in his life had come from years of sweat and toil and work. But Sasha had been born into it. She didn’t have to work every day for a place in this building, she didn’t even have to worry about that.

  Sasha Westgate had everything as a right of her birth and breeding and temperament.

  Sasha Westgate was a perfect, shining goddess, which the world did its level best to keep out of his reach. Probably for good reason.

  She could do absolutely anything.

  She had everything he’d never had and always wanted, including access to her own body.

  That was one of the reasons why he knew his plans would work out perfectly.

  One didn’t decide on betrayal until you were certain of the outcome.

  And unlike what Susan Westgate seemed to think… Thraex’s plans went far beyond his desire to “soil” the woman’s pristine daughter with his dirty hands and foreign uncivilized cock.

  Oh yes. Sasha’s role in the impending betrayal was a major one…

  He held out his arm, ushering Sasha forward towards the waiting car outside the building.

  Sasha strolled off with her characteristic feminine grace, while Thraex lingered behind to watch her hips sway gently from side to side as she walked.

  He once again started imagining bending that perfect, protected little goddess over a table and taking her roughly from behind, while she begged to suck him dry. Pleaded for the taste of his hot seed on her tongue…

  In his imagination, somewhere in the lowest fiery depths of the human afterlife, Susan Westgate would be watching the scene of her daughter getting fucked sore, and Dr. Westgate was screaming in rage and crying helplessly because an uncouth demon was defiling her little princess. And she’d know that there was nothing that she or anyone else could ever do to keep Sasha Westgate away from him again.

  …Not that Thraex held a grudge against Dr. Susan Westgate.

  Because that would be silly.

  It was a wanton and utterly tawdry daydream, the product of a twisted ungentlemanly mind, filled with nothing but outright perversion and lurid sexual excess. It was uncivilized and not something which anyone in this part of town should be thinking, especially about such a nice, respectable woman.

  In other words, it was a fairly normal thought for Thraex. And he deeply enjoyed having it. Again.

  He watched Sasha leave, and before following her, he turned in a circle to once again admire the lobby.

  He loved this building.

  Chapter 4

  “Norman ’Nummy’ Westgate. Died 1924. Drowned while tryin’ to explore an underwater cave, usin’ a breathin’ apparatus of his own design. Apparently, it didn’t work quite as well as he’d ah liked.”

  – Thraex, Damn Fool Ways Westgates Ended Up Graveyard Dead: Vol. 1

  Years Ago

  It was hot today.

  The heat baked this city, making the still, humid air cling to your skin like a wet towel.

  Sasha sat in the back of her family’s 1960 Chrysler Crown Imperial limousine, fanning her face with her hand, trying to keep cool. Even with the air conditioning her mother had installed years ago, the vehicle was still suffocating.

  Sometimes it felt like Sasha’s whole life was suffocating her.

  “I’m late, mother.” Sasha said for the third time in as many minutes. “I was due for work at noon.”

  Her mother rolled her eyes. “No one expects a lady to be a slave to a clock. She arrives when she arrives, and they should be glad to have her there at all.” Dr. Sus
an Westgate checked her makeup in the mirror one more time, just to make certain that nothing had gotten smudged in the thirty seconds since she’d last inspected it. “We don’t want to arrive too early, it looks bad.”

  “Arriving for work on time ‘looks bad.’” Sasha repeated in amazement, thinking that this probably explained the mystery of why her mother’s career in science had plateaued.

  Her mother waved off the concern. “Oh, you know what I mean.”

  “I know what you meant, Mom.” Kurtz volunteered excitedly, always happy to claim some special kinship with his mother. Her other brothers were all off at school or work today, which meant that Kurtz was even more desperate to feel noticed.

  Susan ignored her son, which was pretty typical. “We need to make sure that you set a good example for the students today, since the Freedom Squad will be there.”

  Sasha worked as the Director of Student Affairs for the Horizons Academy, the foremost training ground for prospective superheroes in the country.

  The position wasn’t an honor. It was given to her because of what had happened to the Deneuves.

  She swallowed, once more feeling a rush of shame and guilt over that. It was something that kept her awake at night, and she felt like it always would.

  No matter why she was on staff at the Horizons Academy though, it was mostly just talking to the kids, teaching them about science, and helping them choose career paths. It was a lot of fun, most of the time.

  Sasha missed her lab, but this was nice too. And it would only be temporary. The community didn’t trust her right now, and she didn’t trust herself to do anything major either, so this was for the best. Besides, there were few things in the world more important than helping students.

  Plus, the position had given her the chance to pull every string she still had available, to get Thraex enrolled here. She thought he deserved more from life than just milling around the Westgate Foundation building. Giving him both an education and a chance to put his power to work provided him a way out.