Selling Out (10 page)

“I don’t want any sort of guy, rich or poor. Can’t I just
stay here? It seems safe. I could…I don’t know, be the maid or something.”

Boy, what a visual. “I don’t think Philip needs that kind of
temptation.”

“He doesn’t even like me,” she scoffed. Then, aggrieved, “I
know, I know, they don’t have to like me to have sex with me.”

That brought a brief smile to my face. She was learning. “So
how’d you end up with Henri?”

“They took me out the back, where there’s a bunch of men
standing around a limo. The guys are pushing me forward, like here, we did it.
This scary dude from the limo—I guess that’s Henri—he says, ‘Take her.’ The men
pull me inside, but not before I saw them shoot the guys from the club. I was
so freaked out, just like half crying and half screaming. Henri is cool as
snow, asking me all these questions. What am I doing in a place like this. How
have I been. First I thought he was going to take me home. Then when I realized
he wasn’t going to help me, I thought he was going to… You know.”

Yeah, I knew, but it wasn’t like Henri to gangbang underage
chicks in a nightclub. Even acquiring a girl that way seemed too lowbrow for
him. Most escorts in Chicago would have killed to work with Henri for how much
money he would make them. And status, because there was nothing a hooker longed
for more than respect. Face, Jade would say.

I examined Ella, her soft brown hair and smooth, creamy
skin. Her nose tipped up, her eyes slanted up, doe-like. She was an attractive
girl, no doubt, but there would have been plenty of them at that club, more
sexed up than her. And the fact that he hadn’t fucked her before sending her on
a job meant he didn’t have a sexual interest in her.

For the most part, Henri didn’t take seconds on his girls.
He fucked them first or not at all.

Neither did he bother with rape. Henri liked his women
willing; it made the girl’s inevitable fall more perverse. I shuddered—a
residual reaction, a creak in the shadows of my memory. Only twice had I ever
let Henri fuck me. Once upon a time, it was the price of entry to work with him
and to gain access to the best clients.

Later, I’d been desperate to help my friend Allie fight for
her daughter. Henri had given me the cash, but the experience had been painful
and humiliating. That night I had made a promise to myself. That had been the
last day I worked for him—until the night I met Ella.

Life was about finding the positive, picking the wildflower
from a field of brittle grass. At least she didn’t know that pain, and if I
could keep her safe, she never would.

Resolved, I turned back to her story. “Are you sure the guys
were bringing you out to him? Maybe they were looking for somewhere private,
and you guys saw him doing some deal.”

“No, I remember one of the guys saying how the rich guy
needs to pay up.”

Shadows flitted across her face, pain and horror and grief
for a man she didn’t even know, a man who’d hurt her. This was more than
innocence, her instinctive caring for her enemy—it was goodness. No wonder we
fought all the time. We were oil and water, destined never to mix.

“He was the one I saw on the ground as the door closed.”

I thought back to what Jade had said. “And Henri wasn’t doing
any shady business when you got there? Drugs, women, something?”

“No. He was just standing outside, waiting.”

“Did he give you anything?”

She pursed her lips in frustration. “Like what? No, nothing.
See, this is pointless.”

“The point is saving your ungrateful behind,” I said mildly.

From her position where she reclined on the bed, she
suddenly turned onto her belly and rested her forehead on my jeans-clad knee.
Her words were muffled when she spoke.

“I don’t know what he wanted with me. I didn’t do anything
to him. I don’t know. I don’t know.”

She was bowed down to me, her words like a prayer. I felt
uncomfortable in my own skin, a fake object of worship, a fraud. My skin
itched, too tight, all wrong. She probably needed comfort, but I couldn’t give
her that. I’d known all along I wasn’t cut out for this. I’d said all along
that this wasn’t my thing. I would protect her, not baby her.

I slipped out from her grasp and out of the room, leaving
her arms outstretched to nothing, ignoring the darkened stains of her tears on
the bed. I really didn’t care at all.

Locking myself in my room, I dialed Luke’s number. I wasn’t
ready to deal with his desperate search for some other girl, but this situation
needed him. Ella needed him.

“He is only one cares
enough,”
Jade had said.

I called his apartment first, disconnected. Then his cell
phone; it rang and rang. If he cared so much, then where was he? Not just now,
but every time I had ever been hurt, ever been humiliated, why hadn’t he been
there to protect me? It was irrational to think he could have saved me before
we’d even met, but my love for him was irrational. It was obsession and
affection, all blackened with the taint of resentment that I wasn’t pure
enough. It was lust and it was familial, but then those two things had always
been twist-dyed for me.

I kept thinking if I only had a name for what I felt for
him, the solution would reveal itself to me. But there were no words for it,
only sensations. Only the hollow sound of my voice calling out in a well where no
one could hear me. There was only this churning, choking feeling in my gut, the
remembered bite of a whip I had sworn never to feel again. Now I felt it
always—phantom pain.

How much would I pay to keep my friends safe? It began as a
mantra, a way to help someone who needed it at the time, a way to prove I
wasn’t the shallow rich girl everyone thought I was. How much of myself could I
give away and still be me? I feared we had already passed the mark, the
sacrifice like a cancer that ate away at me inside, always hungry, never full.

A knock at the door startled me. I flung it open, expecting
to see Ella: penitent, indignant, forgiving. Instead Philip glowered there.

“Where the fuck did you go?”

“Don’t start with me.” The look I gave him was pure venom,
my whole body a poison. “I’m not in the mood.”

He brushed past me. “You and your moods. Everyone living at
your whim. You’re like the goddamned queen sometimes, Shelly.”

“I’m a queen?” It was so ludicrous, a laugh puffed out of
me. Resigned, I locked us inside, lest Ella get the idea to check on me after
all. Can’t let the kids see Mommy and Daddy fighting. Or fucking, if that was
what we were going to do here. I recognized the gleam in Philip’s eyes along
with the bulge in his trousers. So he’d finally decided to collect, which felt
like a relief. Why shouldn’t we fuck? No reason. Let it wash over me.

“I work my ass off to keep you safe here,” he was saying,
“and come to find out, you run off at the first opportunity. No one knows where
you are, except Allie.”

“Your sister-in-law,” I said, just to annoy him.

“My soon-to-be sister-in-law, who apparently doesn’t give a
damn about your safety either, because she helped you. I mean, fucking hell. I
told Colin—”

“Ooh, you told Colin how to handle Allie, didn’t you? I
would have loved see his face when you did that.” I grinned, though it felt
more feral than amused. I wasn’t sure why I was needling him this way, except
that the only thing that sounded more appealing than sex right now was angry
sex.

“Why are you taking this so lightly?”

I stepped close to him, bathed myself in his heat. “Because
it doesn’t really matter what happens to me. It’s sweet that you worry, baby.”

He pushed back, uncharacteristically hesitant. “Jesus
Christ, Shelly. What’s gotten into you?”

The glitter of silver in his onyx eyes gave lie to his
refusal; he pulsed with lust, he breathed it out, filling the air between us
with heat and spice. His desire might not have been for me, but caring had
never been a requisite, so I purred anyway, rubbed my body against his in
response, because ohh, he felt so very solid and aroused…so present. Yes, this
was a little bit of payback to a man who’d used me and then turned me loose.
And so what? That man didn’t want me anyway. Another girl.

“I’m trying to make it up to you,” I told him.

“And then worst of all,” he continued as if I hadn’t spoken,
as if his erection weren’t pressing into my belly now, “you leave that girl
here. She’s got claws, that one, and here you’re a cat in heat.”

“So kick us out.” I stepped back, waving my hand as if I
didn’t care—and I didn’t. I was halfway to suicidal on a good day, and this
wasn’t one.

He smiled, and I shivered. “I came up here to make a deal
with you, Shelly. You know how this works.”

“I said I’d give you what you wanted.”

“You don’t have that anymore, sweet girl.”

I stiffened, not aroused nor pliant any longer. He wanted
Ella. He wanted her fight, her youth. Or maybe, as I had learned, there was no
rhyme or reason to who we wanted. “You can’t have her.”

“Why not? She’s old enough.”

“I saved her from that life.”

“Saved her? You’ve got half of Chicago trying to arrest her
and the other half trying to kill her. If this is how you save someone, I’d
hate to see you angry.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Then help me. I know you can.”

“My money. My favors. Mine. I’ve worked damned hard so that
no one can tell me what to do, so that everyone owes me something, and I’m not
about to give one goddamned inch because you ask me to. Once upon a time,
maybe, but not now. Not after you sold me out.”

So it had come to this, finally.

“I’m sorry for that.” My voice dropped to a whisper.
“Please, don’t make her pay for my mistakes.”

His voice slid into a seductive murmur. “I’m not going to
hurt her. Is that what you’re worried about? I understand she’s new. I’d be
gentle. You know I can be.”

The temptation nudged at me, as soft and potent as any
caress. I could walk away from this, just like I had done every time at the
shelter. It wouldn’t be so bad. The shelter was a sort of prison too, and this
one was much prettier. I could even pretend I had saved her still, since Philip
was a far kinder master than Henri would have been.

“I won’t let anyone touch her,” I said. “She’s going to get
her old life back, and when she does, she’ll be…” Pure. I wanted her to have
the life I hadn’t. I wanted her to be worthy of the men I wasn’t. “She’ll be
safe.”

“I would keep her safe.”

He would keep her, but would he let her go? And if he
touched her, even once, she wouldn’t be the same anymore. Always remembering
that her first time was with a man not of her choosing, even if he’d been kind
enough to make her come. Forever wondering whether she would have to pay with
sex one more time. Offering her body, again and again, because she knew at least
that much worked.

“No.”

His face darkened. “You’re not in a position to negotiate,
Shelly.”

“You won’t touch her.” That much I was sure of. There was a
twisted honor among thieves, or in this case, sexual deviants. According to the
rules of the street, by saving her and bringing her here, she was mine. Mine to
sell, if I chose, and mine to keep. He wouldn’t touch her without my agreement.

“You’re here under my protection,” he reminded me.

But he could kick us out. He had no obligation to me or to
her. Street etiquette was to not get involved, and by our very presence here,
he was involved.

“Just give me a few days,” I said, my voice raw, naked. “Let
her stay here, and I’ll fix this.”

He looked doubtful. “And if you can’t?”

She was mine to use as a backup plan. I swallowed. “Then
we’ll see.”

“Then you’ll give her to me, wrapped up in lace,” he said
amiably.

“Yes.” I choked on the word.

“I think we should ink the deal. Something to tide me over.”

I would, I swore silently. I would fix this and free her,
the way no one had done for me, not even Luke. Yes, I could ink that deal, with
blood, with sex. “I saw the way you talked about her. The way you got hard
thinking of her. You’re hard right now with it, aren’t you?” Another roll of my
hips; his sharp intake of breath. “What is it you like about her? Her age?”

“It’s… No… She’s not too young.”

Stammering was deliciously out of character for Philip. I
worked at the buttons of his shirt. “Not too young. And she’ll learn.” Inside, I
ran my hands through the light fur there, touched my mouth to his heated skin.
“Wouldn’t that be fun, directing her? Guiding her?”

He groaned, almost there.

“Show me what you’d do.” I flicked my tongue at the base of
his throat. “Teach me a lesson.”

His restraint fell away; he caved in completely, pulling off
the rest of his clothes while I took off mine. I fell to my knees, eyes wide
and innocent. “I want to please you. Will you show me how?”

It was so wrong. Not only to play the ingénue, but to do it
in the guise of Ella. But Philip had always gotten off on the strange, the
deviant, and I had been right about his desire for her. The fact that he
thought she was too innocent, out-of-bounds, just made the lust sharper. I
would play the part in her place, and in doing so, keep her safe.

He slipped his hand behind my head and guided his cock to my
mouth. There he paused, giving me time to feel it on my lips, the patient
instructor to a curious pupil.

“That’s right,” he murmured. “Let it inside.”

I opened wider, only a fraction. It seemed too big; suddenly
it was too big, and I had never done this before. I felt poignant fear, both of
this foreign male member and of the possibility of failure as I donned my role.

He bolstered me with praise while feeding the air of
pretense. “It’s going to feel so good, your mouth around me, sucking me. I love
your lips, so pink and full. It’s all I can think about when I see them,
spreading them wide around my cock.”