Smoke and Mirrors (24 page)

“I let you cum inside of me.”

He was quiet for a short while. “…Well, thank you.” He swallowed. “It felt more natural, more loving…and, I think…”

He paused and ran his fingers down his face, trying no doubt to hide something. His skin flushed once again.

“What is it?” She gently took his hand and removed it from his face, then held it tight.

“I want to tell you something.” He swallowed and looked away, picking at an invisible piece of lint on the sheet. “Our conversations when I’d stop over and visit you, and on the phone have meant everything to me. I really liked it when you’d call me first.” He paused, his face cracked into a half smile. “These last months, Paris, I don’t completely know what’s going on with me…but I know what’s happened. At the same time, I don’t know what to do about it. It feels too good to just abandon, to walk away even though a part of me is… anxious…” The vein on the side of his neck engorged, as if he were lifting heavy weights. The poor man strained to put forth his confession of the heart. It seemed to be killing him to have to do this, but for whatever reason, he was compelled to complete what he’d begun.

“Shit… I’m just going to say it. We’ve gotten to know each other over these past few months. The conversations became more and more detailed, important to me… and I think… I think I love you.”

She bowed her head a bit, covering a smile.

“I don’t think it, I
know
it. I’m in love with you. Okay, I’ve said it…” He scratched under his nose and closed his eyes, lying down as if he needed a good, long rest.

“Smoke.” She looked earnestly at him. “Sorry, force of habit, plus, I like calling you by your nickname, it’s cool…it fits you.”

He laughed lightly.

“That’s why I’ve been acting so crazy. You and I aren’t even supposed to be talking, let alone going out on dates and having sex.” She tarried, giving herself a moment to compose herself. They hadn’t
just
had sex; she could feel the man pouring his all into her…he’d made each stroke count, and the way he looked at her while he took over her damn body was nothing short of pure adoration. No, they hadn’t had sex. They’d made love. Her heart rate increased in that instant, and now, it was time to expose herself completely. Time to give him what he deserved.

“I want to open up to you, I want to come clean.”

He glanced lazily at her and propped his arm behind his head. “I’ve been waiting for this,” he said with a slight smile. “That wall of yours was still up, and now you want to take it down. I am listening, baby.”

She nodded. “Where do you want me to start?”

“Start wherever you want. I don’t care, just as long as you begin.” He reached over and gently traced her wrist with his fingertip, caressing her just so.

“Okay.” She drowned in her own thoughts, as her pussy throbbed in appreciation of his skills and her lips still tingled from his kiss. She was distracted, unsure what to do or say. Sensing her withdrawal and sudden anxiety, he reached for her a bit tighter.

“Let me tell you about a john I had…he was my favorite…my first white john, too.”

Instead of the man sneering at her, or acting as if she’d broached some horrid topic, he smirked, and sat up on his elbow as if he were truly intrigued, interested, like she was some new show that was airing during primetime. It was the damndest thing. And she loved it.

“Tell me all about it.” His husky voice made her pussy quake once more as she ran her hand along her lower stomach.

“His name was Adam.”

“Like the first man in the bible…”

“Yes. Adam was a prodigy, a young guy, only nineteen, but he’d been pushed through school at an early age due to a tremendously high I.Q. He’d graduated from Berkley at the age of sixteen. He’d even been mentioned in a magazine or two.”

Smoke smirked, but looked duly impressed. “Was he a nerd? What did he look like?”

If she didn’t know any better, he was showing the beginning stages of jealousy. It tickled her a bit.

“Well, he was a short, little guy with a huge penis that bent to the right.” She sucked her lower lip, trying to gauge his reaction but the bastard gave her none. Instead, he acted like she’d only rattled off the weekly weather forecast.

“So, uh, anyway, he’d worked for a computer company creating all of their state of the art software. He wore expensive glasses, dressed conservatively, and though scrawny and a bit plain, he was one of the gentlest and kindest people I’d ever met. Adam knew a lot about an assortment of topics, and it blew me away.”

“I know he was young based on what you’ve shared, but he was still legal. I take it since you said he was your first white john, this happened when you were a teenager. You were under age.”

She nodded in agreement. “Yup. Early on, he asked for my age but I lied. I told him I was eighteen. He asked me so many times, ‘Why are you doing this?’ and I would avoid the topic, hating to go there with him. He often offered to help me get out of the life, but unfortunately, I didn’t trust him, and I didn’t believe I had anywhere else to go.” She paused and massaged her stomach a bit harder, working the memories through her brain, warming them to her commemorative touch.

Smoke brandished a crooked grin. “…He fell in love with you, didn’t he?”

A chill came in the air. Yes, it was true, the man had read her damn mind.

“Yeah,” she sighed. “I was only sixteen, but I knew ‘the look’ by then. He became a sort of knight in shining armor, even got me out of a problem with the police once after I called him from the precinct…got in trouble for a solicitation charge.”

Smoke nodded, keeping his comments a respectful distance as she revealed herself, little by little, let this man deeper inside of not only her body, but her heart and soul.

“The other nice thing about Adam was that he paid well. He always tipped, too. After finding out I didn’t get to see any of the money he gave me, he told me he was going to open an account in my name. He said he’d give me cash to take home to my pimp, but he’d put the same amount in that bank for me to make a move and leave.”

Smoke rolled onto his back and looked up at the ceiling, shaking his head in disbelief. “Now that is almost unheard of. I thought I had heard it all, Paris, but wow, that is something. Yeah, he definitely had it bad for you…and now, I know the feeling.” He turned back and looked at her, his gaze sexy, his lips slightly parted, but his expression serious as a heart attack.

Her heart soared at his observations; he kept ‘taking her there’ making her pelvis twist and turn when he’d speak that way.

“Well, I still didn’t trust him, Smoke, because when you’re a whore, all you hear are lies. The only time johns weren’t lying to me was when their mouths were closed or they were asleep, and even then, their dreams were covered in fabrications, too.”

He burst out laughing, showcasing all of his perfect teeth as he stared back up at the ceiling. “You’re right,” he agreed. “I’ve never been a john, but I know them well. That shit is definitely true.”

“I figured he was talking shit like all of my other tricks, but two years later when Adam was long gone after a relocation from his job down south, he called me. He was a newlywed and you know what?”

“What baby?”

“I was jealous.”

“To add to that,” she continued after a short pause, “he had a daughter on the way, but that honestly made me happy. If anyone deserved to have a good life, it was Adam, and he seemed delighted with the way everything had panned out, as he should have been. He hadn’t called me for needless chitchat however, or to make arrangements for one more ride on the Paris Express.”

Smoke chuckled, enjoying her jokes and pokes of fun at herself… The vibe became easy, comfortable. She drowned into his beautiful blue eyes as he hooked into her every word.

“No, he’d called for one thing and one thing only, to discuss money.”

“So the money he said he was depositing was real?”

She sucked her teeth and nodded, still in disbelief her damn self after all of those years.

“He told me to write it down, you know, the information. He said he had received a statement from the bank he’d set up years earlier that the money was untouched. I was now of legal age.” She shook her head. “He found out my actual age via other means, and that was why his visits to me had stopped right before he’d accepted the new job.” She shrugged. “Regardless, he gave me the information for the bank account, saying that not one day went past when he didn’t think about me, wondering if I was okay… I realized then, maybe he wasn’t bullshitting after all…”

“He was true motherfucking blue.”

“So much so, Smoke, that when I got my ass to the bank, I found out that not only had Adam
really
deposited money, he even kept doing so long after our encounters had stopped. The man left me with close to $94,000.00. I about shit myself right there in that damn bank!”

“Let me get a loan,” Smoke teased as he outstretched his hand. She burst out laughing and gently slapped it away.

“I had the confidence to put my dreams into fruition with this new development and stroke of luck. I withdrew a sizeable portion of it right away, moved out of my pimp’s house while he was fast asleep, passed out high and drunk. I supplied him an alcohol buffet.” Her eyes narrowed as her thoughts turned dark and sinister.

Paris remembered how she’d just stopped short of putting something in the intoxicating liquor that would snuff out his life force, in the same way he’d taken his foot and stomped her childhood to death until it wheezed, moaned and died right before her own eyes. She kept that shit to herself, though…

“So, what happened after you left?” Smoke turned on his side, looking up at her, all inside, around and within the story. She loved how attentive he was, hanging on to her confessions, giving comfort and offering a bit of comic relief at just the right moments when her heart got tight with emotion.

“I bought a ticket for the Greyhound and made a mad dash to Chico, California where I rented a small efficiency apartment. I lived off that money for a while, bought a cheap, second hand car and made do until I got my GED and was accepted into California State University.”

“Damn baby, that is amazing…so proud of you.”

“Thank you, but without God, I couldn’t have had the courage to do it.”

She didn’t miss how the man’s eyes darkened, as if he’d entered a world of disbelief, but he kept his jaded reasoning to himself.

“I had plans, big plans. I got a part time job so I wouldn’t burn through my money, was thrilled to be free, to have control over my
own
damn body and mind, to not be some stranger’s cum dumpster.”

The man’s brows dipped, as if it were some strange, brand new revelation that her thoughts were similar to many women’s in the life. In that instant, she was reminded how differently johns, pimps and whores think about prostitution. Smoke tried to understand this aspect, bless his soul he did, but he was still a man…

She disappeared inside of herself for a spell, loathing how it all had gone down, what had happened during that time in her life. She’d been delivered, but the mental and emotional torment lingered on. She hated to feel any given trick’s heavy, uneven weight on her tiny body, and their sloppy kisses along her face and breasts while they ran their hand, with the glistening wedding band, all over her breasts and pussy. Sometimes she’d have flashbacks, as if enduring posttraumatic stress disorder. She would lie there and leave her body behind, john after john, after john. And then, there was the one horrible circumstance, which trumped it all—an event so horrific, that every time she tried to discuss it with her own self, tried to sort it out, her body would fall into a fit and the tears would come, while she trembled and wished it all away.

“Smoke, let me explain something to you, baby.” She reached for his face, her eyes glossing over as she tried to keep her shit together, to not lose it right then and there.

“Explain it to me, baby…” he said smoothly, though with caring in his tone.

“Because of these ordeals I am admitting to you, I never allowed myself to be in love. I would disconnect from my body when I had to basically perform, Smoke. I was not there!” Her voice trembled. “For me, sex and misery had married, becoming one and the same, and should love enter the equation, I was certain I’d not be able to withstand it. Smoke, you scare the
shit
out of me!”

She looked away from him, unwilling to stomach the sight of him anymore. He grabbed her arm, twisted her around, made her face him once again.

“What I feel for you scares me too, Paris, but not enough for me to leave you alone. I
can’t
leave you alone, it’s too fucking late. And honestly, it’s an adrenaline rush, too.” He shrugged. “So I have no motivation to turn my back on you…you feel too damn good to me.” He pointed to his dick. “Not just for here, but
here
.” He pointed to his heart.

She nodded, self-soothed so she could continue to give this gift to the man, tell him what he needed to know.

“Smoke, for the longest, I wasn’t even convinced I
knew
how to give and receive love from a man in the first damn place. When I realized I was falling in love with you a few weeks ago, I panicked! You kept asking me to confirm a dinner date since I’d agreed to it, and I was busy, but I was also stalling because I knew what was happening. I figured you’d lose interest, and then I’d be safe, but you didn’t…and then, I couldn’t stand it anymore, either. So when you sent the flowers, I admitted to myself that it was too late…I knew at that point that my heart was your’s.”

There. She’d admitted it. He remained unchanged, unresponsive, and for many women, that would have been unnerving, but for some odd reason, the guy seemed to know she didn’t desire him to make a big deal about it. No, she just wanted to set that out there, and walk away for a moment.

“Paris.” He cleared his throat. “I understand where you’re coming from. Who in their right mind would want to fuck with something, in this case, love, that only seemed to cause pain? You’re not abnormal, that’s just being real! That’s real life, and a real ass life reaction!”