RoamWild (7 page)

I ask, “He wants my face painted?”

She nods.

I say, “But all your bottles are white. I’ll look like a dove.”

She says, “A white raven.”

Chapter Thirteen The Buyer

White down to my nails. Painted white feathers surround my lips and eyes. Real ones hang from my ears and the choker around my neck. The gown the maid brought me isn’t one I charged to my new hotshot’s credit card in an Athens shop. It’s a replica of the costume I wear for the Torch Lounge, but white.

The slits run higher, inches above my hip bone. The neckline plunges far below my navel. The back scoops halfway down my ass. Keeping the slinky material on my body requires careful posture. The slightest shrug will send it slithering around my feet. Every sway of my movements reveals parts of me that my underwear would cover if I was wearing any.

I emerge from my cabin in a cloud of fresh perfume. Phil is leaning on the deck rail outside my door, face pensive, arms crossed, head shaded by the white-striped awning, back warmed by the sun.

He says, “He’s ready.”

It’s a man.
I say, “Take me to him.”

I’d figured on walking no further than the master suite next to mine, but Phil leads me down a companion way. He doesn’t offer his hand. This is tricky. In my white heels, taller than the ones I wear at Seattle Young, I can barely manage the steps. The maid follows me and catches the shoulder straps whenever my dress try to fall off.

We pass the crewman who carried my bags to my suite and one of his buddies. The look in their eyes tells me I’m a sight they’ll never forget.

Phil opens the door to a cabin on the deck below, stands aside, and says, “Good luck.” His smile bends under the strain of whatever he’s feeling. The maid stops beside him. I enter alone. The door closes behind me.

Three more steps to negotiate, curving glass ones with a brass rail like the spiral stair at Seattle Young. They tell me I’m on display. I keep my eyes straight ahead, my shoulders back, and my smile wide. My feet find the steps. My hand wants to grab the rail. I make it slide lightly over the brass.

The same show tunes Toussaint plays at the Torch Lounge come from a white grand piano. No one sits at it, but the keys move. The short backlit bar makes dark silhouettes of the bottles and glasses arrayed on glass shelves, and of the topless bartender. She’s my makeup artist, in a white derby hat and a white bow tie. Her tits are dainty.

In the center of a dance floor roomy enough for one couple, a barstool waits for me under a red-lit chandelier. It’s the same height as the fender of the car where I display myself for the bidders at Seattle Young. The top if it is slick-looking red leather. My gaze falls on it with relief. It’s the first un-white object I’ve seen on this boat.

I take my place on the stool. The rungs where my feet find a hold are high enough to lift my knees and make my dress slip away from my legs. I lift my chin, shove out my boobs, and wait. The piano keeps playing. I wonder how long I can hold this pose without falling off the stool or getting a cramp.

A curtain of white beads covers the entry to a short arched passageway. The space beyond is brightly lit. I know what’s waiting. A glass room.

“You are lovely.” The voice is weak and hoarse. I turn toward it. The movement makes a strap fall from my shoulder and exposes my left boob. There’s not a man standing where I expect to see one. I look down. He’s in a wheelchair.

He gives me a struggling smile. His withered neck leans to the side, leaving his head propped against a metal brace. One of his hands rests on the controls of the chair. He motors closer to me. His other hand trembles a he touches my leg. Many men’s hands have done the same. This one seems to shake more from palsy than excitement.

I guess his age as ninety or over.

He says, “Once I bid less for a Monet than I’m paying for twenty-four hours with you.”

I ask, “Did you buy the painting?”

He says, “I did.”

I bend a leg toward him. My dress parts to reveal my cunt. The engagement ring pierced in my labia captures the red gleam of the chandelier above my head. I guide the hotshot’s shaking hand up my thigh. I ask, “Did the Monet feel this good?”

He asks, “What am I to do with you, Raven?”

I slide off the stool. The other strap leaves my shoulder. The dress falls around my feet. I’m naked. The eyes in his immobile head travel me slowly. I’m still holding his hand. I press it to my cunt, which was expertly waxed this morning in an Athens spa. His trembling fingers don’t try to delve me.

A beeping noise from a white box atop his wheelchair speeds up. A point of light zigzags across a monitor, leaving a streak of sharp peaks and valleys. Behind the chair, a few steps away in a shadowed recess beside the bar, a nurse in a white uniform watches anxiously. Maybe I’m supposed to fuck her. But it’s him she’s watching.

I tell my hotshot, “You’re making me feel good.” It’s a lie I know how to tell. The shaking of his hand lessens. The beeping slows.

I ask, “Will you take me to the glass room?”

We move together toward the beaded curtain, him with one hand on my ass and the other on the controls to his chair. I play my finger over the sparse streaks of black-dyed hair plastered to his skull. His mottled skin looks cold, but he’s as warm as any living man.

There are two glass rooms. One is furnished with a bed. The other is equipped with a white table filled with medicine bottles and an IV stand with a bag of some potent liquid hanging ready. An etched glass nameplate on the transparent door to the bedroom says
Raven.

My hotshot says, “Go ahead, dear.”

I step in the bedroom, naked except for the paint on my face and the shoes stretching my legs. Everything feels familiar. No doubt cameras are watching the bed.

My hotshot surrenders his mobility to the nurse who takes the handles of his chair. She wheels him in the next room and attaches him to the IV. In the brighter lights of these rooms I see how his chest looks too square beneath his pleated white shirt, as if his bones carry no flesh. His eyes are lively. The rest of him is ancient and decrepit.

His gaze moves away from me to the doorway behind my back. I turn to meet whoever he’s watching. The man who comes to take me is dressed in white slacks and a white vest over a bare torso. His body is young, slim, and well muscled. I think maybe he’s the crewman who lugged my bags, until I see his face.

My skin creeps. My smile fights to stay in place. If my heart was linked to my hotshot’s monitor, the beeper would be screaming. The man who’s come to take me is my office assistant, Roberto.

Chapter Fourteen Under Roberto

Does he know me?
His eyes aren’t searching for mine. They’re watching his hands roam my body. His to paw and stroke are my arms, ass, and belly. He squeezes my boobs and thumbs my nipples. I wrap my arms around his neck, press my bare cunt against the crotch of his pants, and send my lips searching across his face.

His tongue parts my teeth and finds mine. One of his hands leaves my breast, travels the curve of my chest and hip, and grabs my cunt. I sway my hips and speed my tongue. His finger plays through me.

I glance to the next room. The hotshot who’s paying the bill watches intently. His nurse stands beside his wheelchair and concentrates on the monitor attached to his heart. Roberto’s eyes are open. They’ve followed mine. He takes his lips from my mouth and says, “Come on, bitch.”

I unbutton his vest and run my hands over his firm bare chest. My smile makes promises soon to be kept. I deal with his belt and zipper and wrap my fingers around his hot, hard cock.

He tells me, “Go down.”

I kneel at his feet, take off his shoes and socks, kiss his sweaty toes, and run my hands up his slender, dark-haired legs. My lips follow. My first cock kiss touches the underside, below his knob. His grunt sounds pleased.

My mouth roams his cock and balls, kissing, licking, sucking. My tongue twirls over the rim of his knob. I take his all his cock down my throat. My hands caress his balls and his ass. He pets my hair and holds my head.

I look up to his face, terrified of seeing recognition. He’s filled with the lust of a man taking total possession of a woman. It’s a look I’m used to. His legs stiffen. I wait to swallow a load of his cum.

He says, “On the bed, bitch.” His voice strains with the effort he’s making to keep from coming. My mouth slides off his cock, my knees rise from the carpet, my back flops on the bed, my legs spread, and my arms reach for him.

His smile shows his contempt for the slut I am. The one I return offers a counterfeit of desire. He settles his body on me. I reach over the side of the bed to where the condoms should be. There aren’t any.

I guide his cock to my cunt. He drives it hard inside. My feet rise, my legs curl over his ass, my back arches, my neck bends backward, my eyes flutter, and my mouth parts for the dive of his tongue.

His hips pound me. I fight to rise to his rhythm. His body is the stronger. He humps his cock through me until I surrender, locked to him helplessly, wanting, taking. His arms make me his prisoner. His cock settles tight and empties.

The petals of my labia beat like the wings of a trapped bird. My lips surrender a startled moan and search madly for his. I’ve done this often and well, with many men. I can’t tell if I’m having an orgasm or faking.

Roberto lays his head between my breasts while his cock finishes draining into me. He raises his shoulders. I give him my eyes. His reveal nothing but the spark of triumph I expect.

He bends his head and sucks my nipples. His cock stays in me. I caress the back of his legs with my heels and knead his ass with my hands. If he wants to harden inside me, I’ll do my best to let him.

I look through the glass wall. The hotshot hasn’t moved. The hand he uses to steer his wheelchair makes a faint gesture. I think it means he’s enjoying the show.

The door to the glass room opens. Over Roberto’s shoulder, I watch a naked young woman enter. Roberto releases my boob from his mouth and sees her. I feel a silent laugh go through his belly. He rises off me and sits cross-legged on the end of the bed, between my spread legs.

If he hasn’t taken a good look at the diamond ring pierced through my labia, he’s getting one now. Will he recognize it as one Laurie Deloit used to wear? Whatever he makes of it causes him to smile.

He can’t know the ring, I realize. I’d stopped wearing it on my hand when he began working for me, after the woman who was my assistant before him ran off with me fiancé.

He squeezes my toes and reaches for the new woman.

She moves closer to him. His hand travels over her ass and down the inside of her leg. She’s a short blonde with a nice body. Her face is heavily made up. The cut of her hair looks expensive. She’s wearing hoops in her ears.

Roberto says, “Give me a show, bitches.”

Chapter Fifteen Showtime

The other whore kneels on the bed. I come to my knees in front of her. We embrace. Our lips touch. We play with one another’s breasts and cunts. Roberto says, “Eat her, bitch.” I figure he’s talking to me. I put my head between her legs and my tongue up her cunt. She gives a fake murmur of appreciation.

Roberto’s finger slides in my cunt. I wriggle my hips. He says, “You, bitch. Suck me.” He’s talking to her. I manage to keep my lips on her cunt while we rearrange our bodies. She sucks his cock. I eat her. He fingers me.

He says, “Hands and knees, bitches”

We go to the position side by side. His finger slides in my cunt. Her forced sigh tells me his other hand is doing the same to her. His hand leaves me and his cock probes between my legs.

I think I’m going to take it in the ass, but it heads for my cunt. I guide it there before he can get other ideas. We rock hard but briefly. He withdraws from me and fucks her. She hurries to build to a fake climax before he comes.

Neither the whore nor Roberto are anywhere near my league. Drop me from the act, and they’d barely be fit for the live performance peep-show joint on Second Street in Seattle.

He grunts again when he loses his wad in her. His touch tells me he’s done fucking. I’ve known men with more stamina. He leaves the bed, and she follows. He says to her, “Come on bitch, I’ll buy you a drink.”

I stay on my hands and knees, displaying submission and hoping not to give Roberto a last clear look at my painted face. When I turn to be sure they’re gone, I see him hugging her as they leave through the passage to the bar. He’s carrying his clothes under one arm. She has none to carry. On her left butt cheek there’s a tattoo of a rose.

I recognize it. I saw it at the courthouse. She’s the client who showed up for her preliminary hearing in jeans with the seat torn and nothing covering the exposed half of her ass but the tattoo.

My stomach flips with a new dose of terror. Does she know who I am? Did Roberto? I look through the glass walls. From the wrinkles in my hotshot’s withered expression, I know these reactions of mine are the icing on his voyeuristic cake.

My fear is what he’s paid to see. I’ve shown him how much I’ll do for his money, how true a whore I am.

His lips move. I can’t hear what he’s saying. His nurse wheels him from the glass rooms.

Chapter Sixteen Tethered

I leave the glass rooms and walk through the scaled-down version of the Torch Lounge. Roberto and the other whore are having their drinks are at the end of the bar beside the eternally playing piano. He’s talking, she’s pretending to be amused. They’re naked. From the professional way she’s paying attention to him, I bet she thinks he’s the guy with the money.

The stylist-topless bartender brings them fresh drinks.

I ignore them and leave. I’m entirely naked. The handsome young crewman isn’t around to see the show. On the top deck I cross the empty open-air bar, uncork an expensive bottle of wine, and head for my room. The night air feels soft on my skin. If I looked from under the awning, I’d probably see a net of stars. I don’t bother.

When I open the door to my master suite, I hear the soft beeping of my hotshot’s monitor. Lights are on. He’s in his wheelchair beside my bed. His nurse sits on a chair against the far wall, knees together, hands holding a paperback book she seems to be reading, face straight.