by Kailin Gow
If I left, I'd never know. The world would never know. And there would be no justice. Not for Roz. Not for Rita. Not any of the lost girls that the Blue Room takes in and destroys.
No, I think. I couldn't let them down. I couldn't betray their memory. I had to do whatever it takes in order to get closer to the truth: the truth about what happened to the woman I loved, to the girl who could have been my friend. If I had to sell my body, so be it. At least they'd never have my honor. They'd never have my soul. They'd never have me.
I go back to my room. According to the briefing notes Mrs. Walters has left on my pillow the client, Mr. O., wants to see me “as I am.” No special tricks. No nice dresses. Just...normal clothes. He'll come visit me in my room tonight.
Normal. Just me. I don't even know what that means anymore. I'm so used to playing a part that I have forgotten who I really am. I go through my wardrobe and find...something, anything.
My eyes fall on the simple jeans and T-shirt I wore when I arrived at the Blue Room. Not clothes anybody bought for me. Cheap, normal clothes I purchased myself, because they were what I could afford, because I liked them.
Is that what the client wanted? Probably not.
Finally I choose a pair of simple silk pajamas and a white lace bra.
I guess this is what passes for normal in the Blue Room, I think.
I sit in my bed, waiting for that knock on my door.
I look at the clock nervously. What if this man is the one who killed Roz? Will he be violent with me, too? I look around the room at vases, at the poker for the fireplace – anything I might be able to use for protection if he gets rough. Or what if this man is nice, gentle? Will I start to fall for him, too, to get attached the way I'm already more attached than I should be to Terrence and Xander? All these worries rush through my mind.
I'm not really cut out for this gig, am I, I think.
I go on thinking that as at last I doze off.
Chapter 2
I have so many dreams. My mind is on fire. My body twists and turns, thrashing in the silken sheets all around me. Four hundred thread count Egyptian cotton might well be something that the Blue Towers prides itself on, but when you're in the grip of a nightmare, it sure as hell doesn't do much. Faces appear before me, all around me: faces I recognize.
Rita.
In my mind's eye I can see her, the way she was before she disappeared. Impossibly beautiful, but her beauty came from more than the perfect arrangement of her features. Rita has something else about her, something special. She always did. It's an inner light: an inner purity, that nothing could ever sully. Not even working here.
I didn't know what the Blue Room was, of course, back when Rita started working there. She had told me it was a gig as a cocktail waitress, nothing more. But I could see in her eyes that something was wrong. Her sparkling personality was the same as it was before – she was as good and kind and sweet and unfailingly helpful as ever. But something had gone out of her. Some light in her eyes. She had seen things working at the Blue Room: things I was only just now beginning to understand. She had been privy to to secrets that hurt her. It wasn't just the prostitution – that much I was coming to understand. Sleeping with men for money was just a job like any other. It was the secrecy, the lying, the rituals. The need to make yourself nothing before the most powerful men in the world on a daily basis, to give up your whole personality in the service of someone else's fantasy. Playing the part someone else wanted you to be. That was the hardest part.
I see Rita the way she was in those last months. I see those subtle changes. Her hair is lighter, highlighted for the first time, with that kind of expensive sheen that only money can buy. She wears more makeup – she never used to wear makeup – all the most exclusive brands. Dior lipstick. Creme de la Mer face wash in the bathroom. Signs I should have realized pointed to a job as more than a cocktail waitress, but I guess I was more naïve than I thought back then, or just too crazy about Rita to ever think she could be doing anything less than wholesome. She'd started to change her whole wardrobe, too. Wearing jewels her mysterious Mr. X. had given her – the man she said she thought she was starting to love.
I still don't know his name. I still don't know if Mr. X. is the man that killed her, or even if somebody ever did.
These are the questions that haunt me. These are the questions that turn my dreams of Rita into nightmares. I see her before me: dead, shot in the head, bleeding out on a hotel room floor, and although part of my conscious minds knows that it's Roz, there, lying dead upon the floor, I can't stop myself from seeing Rita's face, from seeing Rita's beautiful eyes lying glassy and open, a single tear running down the cheek I can feel, even in my dreamlike state, is so cold.
What happened to you, Rita? I open my mouth to cry out the words but nothing comes out. Where have you gone? Where can I find you?
Please, please, I whisper, choking on my only silence. Tell me where to find you.
In my dream she wakes up. She sits up straight, staring at me, the bullet still in her brain, the blood still trickling down her temple, but she's alive and blinking and her gaze is terrible.
“You fool,” she says. “Staci – don't you see? The answer's right in front of you. It's been in front of you this whole time. But you always were stupid, weren't you, beautiful? You never knew how to recognize something when it was right in front of your face. And now I'm dead, because of you. And you'll never find out why.”
“Rita!” This time I am able to cry out, but it is too late. Rita dissolves, and then I'm in a room: like my hotel room at Blue Tower, but bigger, somehow, and everything's just a little wrong, a little tilted, a little strange. My bed is rocking back and forth like a ship in a storm and my sheets seem to rise up of their own accord all around me, caressing my skin. The touch is like the touch of a lover.
At first I think it's Rita.
I call her name, but she's gone now. I can feel it, how far away she is from me. I can feel her absence and it is like the worst and the coldest chill in the world.
But then I feel something else. My sheets are rubbing against my skin. And they are not cold. Their touch is...almost warm. Compared to the icy storm around me, they are welcome. I moan involuntarily as the sheet slowly rolls itself along my thighs, across my stomach, between my breast, wrapping me tight.
And then I think I hear it. The heartbeat. The sound of another life next to me: beating, hard. The sheets have a pulse and I can hear it, and it is beating in sync with my own, and the feeling is beautiful and terrible all at once, and I am afraid I will not be able to stand it.
I cannot believe what is happening. I am experience a strange, dark feeling. A flush in my cheeks. A heat in my skin. A familiar throbbing all through me, running up and down my spine from the nape of my neck to the warm places between my legs.
What is happening, I wonder.
But now the sheets seem to have bunched together to form a figure: a man.
And then I am looking at him, straight at him, a man with a face in shadow but who is so familiar, the way he touches me is so familiar.
Mr O...I think. But I'm still dreaming, aren't I – am I still dreaming? As he touches me, I begin to moan again. He strokes me, and my skin shudders and shivers against his touch. He drives me wild with his lips, teasing my shoulder, tantalizing their way down my stomach to my pelvis, darting so slightly and lightly between my legs until I arch my back and beg for more, more....
“More!” I moan.
The sound wakes me up.
And suddenly I am in my room again, my real hotel room, with the lights still on and my sheets in tangles all around me and my whole body soaked with sweat and desire.
What happened? I wonder. Everything is fuzzy as I emerge, slowly, from my groggy stupor. I feel as if I've just been ravished.
And then I see him.
His back is to me: muscular and finely formed, powerful.
And I realize that he has touched me in my sleep, in my hidden
places. And that it felt good.
Is this Mr. O?
Outrage and anger rise up in me! Did he grope me while I was asleep? This man – who doesn't even know me – thinks it's right to touch me without permission! I don't care what the circumstances are – I'm furious.
“Hey!” I shove him. “Hey!” The second push pushes him clean off the bed. “How dare you! I don't care if you did pay – you can't just come in here while I'm asleep and...”
“Can't I?”
My mouth falls open.
Terrence Blue is standing before me. Shirtless.
I take a second to take in his beautiful, perfect form. In his tailored suits he's sexy as hell, but somehow, shirtless, he's even more primal.
“Terrence?”
“Don't worry, baby...” Terrence smiles. “Nothing happened. Much as I wanted it to. I just ran my fingers down your shoulders once – and you started moaning like there was no tomorrow. Whatever you were fantasizing about, I wish I was there.”
Relief floods through me. After Terrence was ousted from Blues Enterprises I'd been terrified that I'd never see him again, that all that we had left to say to one another would remain forever unspoken. I'm so happy to see him again that I forget, for a second, that I'm still expecting my missing client.
Then I remember. Panic floods through me. Terrence isn't my boss, now, and he's not there to get me out of trouble anymore. If Mr. O. arrives to find me in bed with another man, Mrs. Walters will have me kicked out of Blues Tower in no time.
“Terrence – you have to get out.”
“Why?” He leans against the wall, showing off his muscles. He knows exactly what he's doing to me, I think. And I both love and hate it. “You busy?”
“Actually, Terrence, I am,” I say. “I have a client appointment.”
He looks at his watch. “It's four a.m.”
“He's late.”
“Very late, I'd say,” Terrence says, still grinning. “After all, his appointment started at 8 pm.”
“He might still show up,” I say. “And I don't want to get into trouble if he does. Wait a second...” The thought just hits me. “How did you know the appointment started at eight?”
Terrence shrugs.
“You don't mean...”
His smile is gleaming.
“You can't mean.”
“I do, baby.”
“You're Mr. O?”
“Yes, my darling Staci. I am. Surprised? I'll bet you are, based on that cute little O your mouth is making right now.”
“Terrence...” It's the last words I'm able to get out of my mouth before Terence kisses me, drowning me in the heat of his desire. And then he's pushing me back on the bed, into the sheets my desire has already made hot and damp with need, into the pillows, pushing me so roughly but his touch is gentle, so gentle, and his tongue is already trailing its way down my neck, and I think that as sexy as dreams are, they don't come close to the reality.
At least, not with Terrence Blue...
Chapter 3
Sex with Terrence is as good as I remember. Maybe better. All our pent -up anger and aggression and longing and need comes out, spilling over, overwhelming us both. Our bodies are against one another, moving as one, our tongues and fingers and lips and limbs all intertwined. It feels like we are not two beings but one: a single living creature fueled only by its hunger for sex, by its insatiable need for that moment of ultimate pleasure that eclipses everything.
Terrence is on fire. His body is hot to touch, so hot, almost, that it hurts, but I don't care. Pain and pleasure are as one, now, and I cannot think of or focus on anything beyond the impossible beauty of this moment, this moment I cannot bear. I am overwhelmed by my need for him, by how piercing it is, how good. I need him, I think. Every hour, every minute, every second, I need the feeling of him against me, of him inside of me. I will drown, I think, in him, in this sea of desire and passion and hunger that is like no other hunger I have ever known. I will drown and I will welcome the drowning, yes, I think yes, this is what life is meant to be.
He places his head between my legs. He probes, softly, with his tongue, sending me towards the edge and then careening over it as he licks me, again and again, as I come screaming his name.
I do not realize how much I have missed him until he takes my shaking, shivering body into his arms – his arms which are so warm and strong and which fill me with such a sense of security that I almost forget that I have loved Xander, too – and kisses my shoulder, my neck, my hair.
“Oh, my darling,” he says, stretching out contented, purring, like a cat. “How I've missed that sound. How I've missed making you make that sound.” His grin is charming but rakish. “It's been too long...”
“But I don't understand...” I say. “Why are you Mr. O?”
“I have no formal role in Blue Enterprises anymore,” Terrence says, grimacing. “Sad to say. ousting was total and complete. I reject it utterly. But, unfortunately, I do not have the power of access to Blue Tower – or to you – anymore. Not without paying for it. But it was a price well worth it, I think.”
“Why were you ousted?” I ask, leaning up on my elbows. “I mean – what happened?”
“Family stuff,” says Terrence. His smile is dark. “Just us Blues on the board. But I guess our family gatherings are not as...amicable as some. Or maybe all families are unhappy in their own way. I heard that once. Don't know who said it. Someone who knew a Blue or two in his day, I guess.”
“Your own family?” I gasp. “How could they do that to you? That's just awful.”
Terrence shrugs. “It's funny, I guess,” H e says softly. “We can be just awful to each other but somehow it's okay, it's normal, because we're blood. Blood will have blood, they say. I guess that's true. There was certainly some bloodshed on the board meeting.”
“But Danny?” I think of Terrence's half-brother. So stoic, so responsible. Wary, to be sure, of his spendthrift, irresponsible half-brother – and way too keen to keep distance between me and Terrence – but I got the impression that his feelings for his brother were protective, not malign. I couldn't imagine Danny masterminding a scheme to really hurt Terrence. And he doesn't seem to care about the Blue Room enough to hang his hat on that. From what I remember, Danny is disgusted by the Blue Room even existing. “How could Danny do that to you?”
“He wasn't the only one,” says Terrence. “You have to understand, it's pretty complicated.”
“Apparently,” I say. “So who else was there.”
“Roni Taylor,” Terrence rolls his eyes. “Of course. She's the worst. None of us wanted her there, but legally she's entitled to be. As disturbing and disgusting as that is. She cares about the Blue Room more than anybody.”
“But why?” I ask. “She has money. She has power. Why care about this?”
“Dare I say it's ideological?” Terrence sighs. “The Blue Room – she founded it, you know. It's her baby. She believed in it. The idea that the wealthiest and most powerful men could be matched with beautiful girls with a special skill set, girls who knew how to please men like Clarence. CEOs, sheikhs, foreign politicians, hell, local politicians. She believes all sex is about an exchange of money and power. So why not formalize it? She's ice-cold, that one.”
“I don't understand,” I say. “Why would whether or not some sheikh gets his rocks off even matter to her?”
“Because,” Terrence's voice is very final. “Roni doesn't believe in love. She believes in sex. And in rich men getting their sexual needs fulfilled, their fantasies fulfilled. She thinks it's s a moral obligation or something. She believes the only way for women to get ahead in this world is to use their bodies and her wiles. The way I see it, she thinks she's doing the Blues Girls a favor, getting them access to real power. It's not just about money, for her. She really believes this stuff that the perfect woman will never want a real commitment from a man, or dare threaten some happy perfect life with a wife, a family, pristine home. And she believes, t
oo, that it's important for wealthy men to be able to do the most degrading, the most perverse things, without ever affecting that same home life. So I guess you could say she sees herself as a protector. Letting people be crazy in a safe space. It's almost noble, when you think about it.” He chuckles. “Or would be, if it weren't Roni. Who knows how many marriages have been saved just because the husbands are able to get whatever they need out of their system here...”
“That's disgusting!” I cry, shocked.
“Come on, do you really think everyone from Mr. A. to Mr. Z. is single? Plenty of these guys are married...”
I think at once of Xander. Could he be married? He always said he was single, even introduced me to his friends at that party as his girlfriend – but if there's one thing that my time at the Blue Room has taught me, it's that everybody has a double life. No exceptions
“I don't understand,” I say. “Why would Roni care about any of this? She can hardly stay with one man, let along keep all the men in her husband's circle from cheating or whatever they do.”
“Ah, well,” says Terrence. “It's not totally altruistic. It benefits her as well. She protects what she and other trophy wives like her in the billionaire circle have. Their husbands can go fool around all they want to, but only in a way where it would never so much as threaten their perfect little marriage, their perfect and pristine image as captains of industry. White picket fence and all.” Terrence rolls his eye.
“So why did she want you out of here?” I ask Terrence.
Terrence stretches again. “She never wanted me here,” Terrence says. “I mean, she never envisioned me as an actual hands-on manager, pardon the pun,” he adds, kissing me and running his hand over my naked breasts. “She thought I was too stupid and lazy and incompetent to actually run the place. I mean, she's not wrong. I hardly have the will to resist something...or someone that tempts me. And the last thing she wanted was to see me with another girl.”
