by A. J. Downey
“And who you calling beautiful? Sure as hell didn’t sound like you meant me,” Tiff said lightly, voice edged with forced sarcasm. I traced a gentle finger down the scar along the side of her face, the reason she would say that to me. Tiff wore a Venetian mask when she danced or she hid behind her long brown hair that was so like Tilly’s. Almost nobody got close enough to see the scar, let alone touch her. I felt privileged the girl would let me pay her to fuck her. She was that kind of stunning. And to the right kind of man, the scar only added to that beauty; it didn’t detract.
“You are beautiful,” I said and I meant it. “You’re just not her.”
Tiff was young and had a story, it just wasn’t none of my business. We kept it to sucking and fucking every once in a while when she was short on rent. I tried to treat her right, I definitely overpaid her, but there was only so much my broken heart had to give and money wasn’t going to buy her happiness. Just her body from time to time.
“Hey, don’t.” She touched the side of my face and regarded me with sad blue eyes. “You do that and this won’t work for either of us anymore and I need the money,” she said softly. She moved her barely-there scrap of panties back over her puss and slid off the backroom’s counter.
“You’re good to me, Dragon. I can’t do this if you feel guilty for it. I can’t…”
“Sorry, Darlin’,” I stopped her soothingly with a crooked grin, pulling her short satin robe up onto her lithe shoulders.
“Don’t be,” she said with a brave little smile and pulled the two sides of her robe together, retying the belt. “Can you do me one favor, though?” she asked quietly.
“Sure,” I said, finishing doing up my pants and belt.
“Who was she?” she asked. She was back to hiding the scarred side of her face behind her hair. I brushed it aside and drew her close, laying a line of soft, butterfly kisses along the length of the seam in the side of her beautiful face.
“She was bold, unafraid, an adventurous woman. She was my wife.” I told her, leaving off the ‘And I killed her.’ I handed Tiff a wad of bills, I never paid any of the other girls I did this with. I didn’t have to. Most of them were just happy to have the President’s cock in ‘em. Tiff was special. Tiff was young and didn’t need to let me fuck her, but she needed the money. When one of the more seasoned girls had come to me and told me about her, that some of the guys were getting a little rough with her, I had her sent my way.
“Thank you,” she said somberly. I hooked a hand around the back of her neck and pulled her forehead to my lips.
“You need to find a different line of work, Baby,” I murmured against her hair and she nodded.
I let her go, and went out the back exit into the summer night, intending to head back to the club. I found myself at the overlook instead. Palms flat against the scarred wood of that fucking table. If I closed my eyes and breathed in real slow and deep, I could almost smell it… that hint of roses and sex.
1
Tiffany…
I stared into the mirror of the dressing table I shared with my best friend Delia in the boudoir at our mutual place of employment. Sugars was a seedy little strip-club off the old main drag of town, and popular with the locals. It was also, by all appearances, as low-rent of an establishment as they came, but honestly, the seedier-looking the better. Silas wouldn’t look for me here.
I wiped the crimson stain off my lips and stared, all wide brown eyes framed in tatted lace that covered the top of my face and followed the curve of one cheek. It was a gimmick I had adopted to keep me in this line of work. The only thing beautiful about me was my body and the side of my face left unmarred by Silas’ handiwork.
I’d been here three years, stripping and even selling my body for sex to try and climb out of the pit of despair that had been that night – the night the good-looking rodeo star had changed everything and turned me all sorts of ugly.
I’d been a runaway at sixteen, had followed the rodeo working the concessions and had fallen squarely into Silas’ trap by nineteen. I’d barely gotten my GED and I was working hard to improve my lot in life by taking night courses at the community college. Silas had been everything in the beginning. Another handhold up, someone to look up to and he had made me feel so safe, so long as I had fallen in line and didn’t stray. Which I didn’t. I never had, and I never would.
It’d been Delia’s birthday weekend and she’d begged me to go out dancing with her and the rest of the girls. I’d gone, even though Silas had tried to get me to stay home. He’d shown up at the bar, caught me dancing with another fella. He’d been hopped up on drugs, broke a bottle against the bar, screamed something about making it so only he could love me and he had torn into the side of my face with it.
I peeled off the lace mask, the light theatrical adhesive pulling on my skin. I affixed it to the Styrofoam head and sighed, shoulders drooping under the weight of my pathetic reality.
I didn’t usually go down the awful, twisted lane of my memories, but I couldn’t help it tonight. The letter that had come in the mail today changed everything. I was supposed to be safe for five years, not three. Silas had been sentenced to five years, screaming about how he was going to kill me as they had bodily dragged him out of his sentencing hearing. Except, according to the trifold slip of single computer printout from the Kentucky Department of Corrections, they were letting him out early.
He’s going to kill me had been running through my head nonstop since I’d opened the envelope. I had plucked it from my mailbox on my way in here.
He’s going to find me and he’s going to kill me… It’s only been three years and they’re going to let him out and he’s going to find me and he’s going to make good on his promise. He’s going to kill me.
Except as shitty as my life was, I wasn’t ready to die. I let out a long drawn out breath and threw down the makeup-removing cloth onto the table scattered with makeup. I stared at the scarred wooden top, at the eyeshadows and lipsticks, the wreckage left behind from wearing the painted mask of a stripper nightly.
I felt frustrated tears well up in my eyes but refused to look at my reflection in the glass. I hated it. Hated what he did to me. Hated that I’d been reduced to stripping and whoring to pay for the medical debt, over a hundred grand! I was so close to digging myself out and they were releasing him early.
The door to the backstage slammed open and my best friend Delia came through. I, of course, jumped and froze staring wide-eyed in her direction before I could even think to fix my hair.
“Ah! God, I am so glad this night is over!” she declared loudly, tipping her head way back and letting out a gusty sigh. She went on to say something else, but she turned to look at me and whatever it was died on her lips. She took a sharp intake of breath and said instead, “Shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“I’m not scared,” I lied and she gave me a look like, really bitch?
“Right, you never leave your face uncovered. I scared the crap out of you.”
She was right. I quickly turned back to the mirror and finger-combed my hair over the offending half of my face, covering the wicked, forking seam of scar tissue with a sheet of deep, glossy brown.
“I’ll make it quick,” she said, striding in her platform stripper heels to the bank of lockers. She pulled on clothes over her bare chest and g-string, and unbuckled her heels to pull on some comfier boots.
I was already dressed in jeans and knee-high leather boots, a soft cotton and rayon long sleeved black shirt that clung to my body with a plunging neck and backline. It was hardly modest, but once I added my scarf and jacket it would be.
“I’m ready to get out of here, too,” I said softly, and went back to work on my hair, ensuring it would keep things covered.
Delia, god love her, chattered away about so many things that I just really didn’t have the heart to listen to. She knew and didn’t press, just went on to fill the silence with her random chatter while I waited for her to finish gett
ing dressed to take us home. She was the only one of us with a car. I shuffled every red cent I had into paying off my debt and for school. Online courses had become a godsend. I was almost done with that, too.
Damn him.
I got up and let Delia take my place at the dressing table so that she could change out her lipstick and touch up her eyeliner, tucking the offending paper into my back pocket and going to my locker for my scarf and my black leather biker jacket. It was really a style-over -function thing when it came to the latter, but I liked it. It made me feel tougher than I actually was.
We cleaned up our mess, stowed our makeup in our lockers, and made sure everything was secure before I followed Delia’s bright chatter away from the dim club and pounding music. We moved swiftly through the neon-lit dark of the backstage and both waved bye to Zeke at the back door. A big country boy, he served as our bouncer on the same shift. He swept open the door for us like he always did, Delia and I spilling out into the real dark and nearly empty lot, the crisp night air cold enough to sting our faces. We moved swiftly over to her beat-up Honda and she opened her door, leaning across to open mine.
I got in, clutching my purse in my lap and locking the door behind me, while she started it up. I swept the seatbelt across my chest and clicked it home nervously while she put it in reverse.
He’s not even out yet, I told myself, but it didn’t matter. The fear that accompanied memory was in full effect.
Delia lived the next town over. It was nicer there, while I lived on the edge of this town on its opposite side in a steal of a rundown studio apartment. Delia lived in a pretty complex, but the nicer part came with a price tag I wasn’t willing to pay for in my efforts to get the fuck up out of here.
We were on the two-lane highway headed for home and my mind was on overdrive when I interrupted her shit-talking about one of the other girls, Cherry, by blurting out, “Delia, do me a favor and pull in here up on the right.”
She looked over at me, mouth dropped open in surprise and asked, “In there?” with a squeak.
“Yeah, in there. Now, Delia! You’re going to miss it!”
“Tiff, what in the world do you want to go in here for?” she demanded and I pressed my lips together, trying to think of a reply.
“I know a couple of them, and I want a drink,” I lied and got out of the car. I leaned down into the open doorway and said, “Don’t wait for me, k?”
“Tiffany!” she called out, as I shut the door soundly. I swallowed hard and walked across the blacktop scattered with gravel to the front of the low, cinder-block building. I dragged open the door, loud music pounding, light spilling out, and without looking back at my best friend, went inside.
My pulse pounded in quick, steady rhythm with the classic rock song while I scanned the crowd, a bunch of surprised and questioning faces turned in my direction. A big man leaned back from the bar and eyed me up and down and asked, “Who you looking for, Sweetheart?” A diminutive woman perched on a barstool in front of him leaned back to look at me from around him. She swept me with a golden gaze, her eyebrows going up.
“Dragon,” I called back. “You know him?”
Laughter met me as a reply and another man next to the big blond asked, “Is she for real?”
“Yo, P!” the big blond boomed out over the room and I saw the man I was looking for stand up over a knot of seated people across the room. He scowled and came around the table towards us and I tensed. The man had a habit of moving like a thunderhead across a room. Intimidating.
“You got a minute?” I called out when he was close, and he cocked his head and jerked it past the bar, deeper into the club towards the back. I swallowed hard and nodded, taking a step forward, he held up a hand and halted me mid-step.
“You look like you need a drink, Sweetheart.” I nodded and he lifted a chin at the woman behind the bar. She lifted her chin and set two glasses on its polished wood top and a bottle of tequila next to them, her tattooed arms full of flowers.
He picked up the glasses with his thick fingers in the rims, pinching them together, and wrapped his other hand around the neck of the tequila bottle. I shuddered, my eyes fixed on his fingers around the neck of that bottle and felt my mouth go dry.
It wasn’t the same grip but that didn’t stop the wave of nausea, or the clear glass from turning brown, the silver label turning red and white. I closed my eyes and breathed slow and deep and when the room righted again I opened them. Dragon’s eyebrows were raised and he jerked his head. I nodded and followed.
He opened a door just past the archway leading to a branch of hallways and ushered me through. I went in and he flipped on a harsh overhead light. It was a bedroom and of course, he probably thought I was here to line my pockets… shit. Maybe this was a bad idea.
I turned and he shut the door, setting the glasses on the scarred dresser top. He poured some alcohol into one and held it out to me.
“Ain’t here for that, are ya?” he asked straight-away, jerking his head in the direction of the bed behind me. Dragon was my best, ah, after-hours, client at the strip club. Paid well, was generally quick about it, and was as respectful as a man paying for sex could be.
“No, um…” I downed the tequila in my glass and winced, making a face and held the glass out. I meant to hand it back but he poured some more. I thought about it a second, downed it, too and held out the glass, gasping out around the smooth burn, “No more, please.”
He took the glass and set it aside then took a sip of his own. He raised an eyebrow and said, “That there was good sippin’ tequila. What’s got you so worked up?”
I pulled the letter out of my back pocket and said, “You said if I ever needed anything, I should come to you.” I swallowed hard. “I hope you, uh, really meant it, because I’m scared and I, um, I don’t know what to do.”
I held it out to him and he scowled, set his glass down and unfolded the paper. His jaw clenched, his brows knitting together as his stormy dark eyes skimmed the page.
“Get comfortable,” he ordered. “This here is going to be a talk.”
I went to sit and he waved me up holding out a hand for my purse. I slipped it over my head and held it out to him and he put it on the coat tree hiding behind the door. He held out a hand for my scarf, and then one for my jacket and, once satisfied, waved me down to sit on the end of the bed.
The letter he set on the edge of the dresser. He came around and dropped heavily onto the end of the bed beside me and looked me over. He reached out and I flinched, knowing what he was going for. He froze mid-motion and said, “Easy, you ain’t gotta hide from me, Sweetheart.”
I held stock still as he traced along the fall of my hair that hid the ruined side of my face before pushing it back behind my ear. I swallowed hard, feeling more exposed than when he fucked my naked twat in the back room at Sugars.
“He how you got that?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I answered morosely.
“He’s out in a couple of days according to that thing.”
I felt my eyes mist and I tipped my head back, staring at the ceiling. “I know.”
“He knows where you’re at?”
“That, I don’t know.”
“Okay.” He nodded slowly.
“I don’t know what to do,” I said frankly.
“You said that,” he said with a soft grin and he looked me over.
“Since you’re here, you mind?” he asked, quirking a brow and I frowned slightly.
“Will you help me if I do?”
“Shit, I’ll get you the help, and I’ll pay you for the privilege for right now, too,” he said.
I nodded and he did something unprecedented; he drew close and put his lips on mine. In all the times we’d ever fucked or boned, he’d never kissed me. Not once. Partially because I knew I reminded him of his dead wife, and partially because I tore a page out of the Pretty Woman Art of Hooking handbook. I didn’t kiss my clients. I held that back for myself.
He didn’t
let his lips linger on mine too long, trailing them in a soft caress along my jaw to where he typically liked them to be, the side of my neck. I closed my eyes and tried to get into it, but it was hard. I wasn’t used to there being a bed. This was far and away more of an intimate setting than I was used to. Not to mention, I had on way more clothes as a starting point.
“Last time, Sugar,” he breathed in my ear. “Relax a little for once.”
I didn’t know what he meant by ‘last time.’ When it came to selling myself for sex, I honestly hoped it wasn’t my last time with him. He paid well above what my going rate was, and compared to some of the other guys, he wasn’t half bad. He actually cared if it felt good for me, not just whether the show I put on was convincing.
I sighed out and closed my eyes, concentrating on the feel of his mouth against the side of my neck, the tickling sensation of his beard against my skin, the feel of the warmth of his hand against my waist. He pulled my shirt from the waistband of my jeans and slid a hand underneath and I let him.
It was a strange sort of consent, of willingness when it came to sex for money. While your heart rebelled, your mind overrode it. I wanted this with my head, and when it came to Dragon? Easily halfway with my heart. It was frustrating, though, because as much as I wanted it with Dragon, what I really wanted I knew I would never have. Just the illusion of it, and wasn’t that what I was selling? Illusions? These men, Dragon included, knew I didn’t want them, but I had to pretend that I did.
I needed to go through all of the motions, the sighing, the moaning, the arching and the trembling… except with Dragon, unlike any of the rest, half of it, if not more, was true. He did make me sigh, and he did make me arch, and out of all of them, I did actually let go enough to come from his attention without much accompanying guilt.
This time was different, and it was more than just our surroundings. I couldn’t quite pinpoint what it was, maybe it was the buzz kicking in from the good tequila, who knew? But I did manage to let go a little more than usual when he slid a hand down the front of my jeans and teased at my clit. He was the only one of my clients to even pay attention or care that it existed.
