The Debt 9 (Club Alpha) (9 page)

***

Faith didn’t take long in the
shower.
 
Already her mind was
racing, running through scenarios, probabilities, and none of them were good.

All she could think about, when she
closed her eyes, was him.

The feel of his skin.

The taste of his mouth.

The feel of his body, his power, his cock
inside of her.

Even as she showered, she was getting
excited again, her nipples hardening, her pussy beginning to ache with need.

If Chase Winters was a drug, she was
hooked.
 
One time and she was
already addicted.

Minutes later, she got out of the shower,
toweled off and dressed.
 
When she
came back out of the bathroom, Chase was waiting for her in the living area,
wearing track pants and a tank top.
 

She stopped dead in her tracks at how
unbelievably hot he was.

He was still stunning, even more stunning
now that she’d been intimate with him.

“What’s wrong with you?” he laughed,
arching an eyebrow.

“Oh, nothing.
 
I just…I thought I forgot something,”
she lied.

“Leave the stove burner on at home?”
Chase goofed.

“No,” she said, rolling her eyes again.

“Oh, well, maybe you forgot this,
then.”
 
He held out his hand toward
her and revealed a gleaming cell phone.

“What’s that?”

“That’s your damn phone, girl.”
 
He laughed, like he couldn’t believe how
crazy she really was.

“That’s not my phone,” she replied,
walking slowly forward.

“It is now.
 
Catch.”
 
He flipped it towards her with an easy
snap of his wrist, and it flew through the air, end over end.

Faith caught it, but just barely.
 
“Hey!” she said.
 
“I almost dropped that!”

“Nice hands,” Chase replied, winking.

She couldn’t be bothered to tell him how
irresponsible it was to throw an expensive new phone like that.
 
She was too busy examining it, turning
it over in her hands.
 
“This is
seriously my phone now?
 
What do I
do to get it turned on?”

“You, uh, turn it on.”
 
Chase came over and hit the button on
the center of the cell phone and the screen lit up.

“Oh.
 
Now I feel dumb.”
 

When the screen powered up, Faith pulled
up the contacts list and it was totally populated already.
 
“Wait a second,” she said.
 
“How did all of my stuff get transferred
over already?”

Chase shrugged, turned away from
her.
 
“Not my area of expertise,
baby.
 
Something to do with the
cloud or some shit.
 
Point is,
you’re good to go now.”

Faith was still staring incredulously at
the brand new state-of-the-art phone that he’d just given her.
 

Chase
Winters just gave me a phone.

Or
is it payment for services rendered?
She wondered, an uneasy feeling rippling through her belly.

“I don’t know if I can accept this,
Chase,” she said, realizing she hadn’t used his name much, if ever, until now.

Chase had grabbed a football from
somewhere and was tossing it straight up in the air and then catching it again,
palming it in one hand, doing things that made it look like an extension of his
body.
 
“You can,” he said.
 
“You already did.”

“Well, I might need to give it back.”

“That’s just dumb.”

She frowned.
 
“Don’t call me dumb.”

“Then don’t say ridiculous shit to me,
girl.”

I
can’t believe it.
 
He’s trying to
pay me for sex.
 
This phone is just
his way of saying thanks for a good time and have a nice life.

“I’m not some dumb girl,” she said, her
voice rising as she glared at him.

Chase was about to toss the football up
in the air again, but he stopped in mid-motion and looked at her.
 
Those dark eyes of his had grown hard and
flat now.

“I never said you were a dumb girl,” he
told her.
 
His jaw shifted side to
side as he regarded her coldly.
 
“And
now I think you should go.”

“Fine.”
 
She wanted to cry or yell or scream.

But mostly, she just wanted him to fuck
her again.
 
And that was the worst
part of all, she realized as she walked past him.

“The limo’s out front,” he said, as if
he’d known in advance that this was the direction things would take.
 
Perhaps he’d read her the same way he
read defenses, knowing player tendencies, anticipating where people would go
before they knew it themselves.

“Lovely,” she retorted, her voice shaking
with rage and humiliation.
 
“Thanks
for a great night, Chase,” she called out sarcastically, as she opened the
front door, seeing him still standing there out of the corner of her eye.

He was holding the football in one hand,
and as she began to exit, she saw him toss it lightly up and catch it again,
just another catch of millions.

And then she was outside, and alone, and
the limo was waiting to take her home.

***

It was shameful, but she cried all the
way back.

If the driver thought it strange, he
didn’t show it.

Probably, Faith thought, this was just
the norm with Chase Winters and perhaps other powerful men this driver had
worked for.
 
They had plenty of
women back to their homes and then wanted to get rid of them when the deed was
done.

The driver had to deal with the crying
and hysterics so the men didn’t have to.

By the time they pulled up to her
apartment complex, she was calming down, although her eyes were swollen and her
nose raw from rubbing at it.

Faith thanked the driver, apologized for
crying, and then got out and went inside.

She tried to go to bed and fall asleep,
but Faith found herself wide awake as the minutes ticked by.
 
All she could seem to do was think about
the events of that night.

The sex had been so hot, so powerful and
intoxicating, but the aftermath had been a complete letdown.
 

As she replayed the part where Chase had
given her the new phone, though, Faith started to feel confused about her
reaction.
 
Had he truly intended it
to be a gift or a payoff for sex or what?

Maybe that sort of thing was just
standard for professional athletes.
 
That’s how they handled their girls and she’d screwed up by calling him
on it.

Faith didn’t know, but she was starting
to regret her post-sex freak-out.

She didn’t want to lose Chase over that,
not if there had been any chance that he would want to see her again.

For hours, she lied in bed and debated
texting him an apology.
 
And of
course she continuously checked her new phone, praying that he might text her
something first to alleviate the problem.

But he never did and she never did
either.

Eventually, she simply passed out.

And when she woke up, she didn’t feel any
relief.
 
The first thing Faith did
was check her brand new phone and see no new calls or text messages.
 
The entire morning, all she did was
check her phone and wonder if she’d ever get another chance with Chase Winters.

All day long, she was caught up in her
memories of the previous night—the intensity of the experience, all of
the things they’d said and done to one another.
 
It made her excited, charged up, but
then she would get depressed because there was no way to know if it would ever
happen again.

At about one o’clock, Greg stopped by her
cubicle and checked on her progress.
 
When he saw the stack of case report forms she’d scanned, the corners of
his mouth turned down.
 
“What the
hell is this?” he said, putting his hands on his hips.

She turned in her chair to look at him.
 
“What’s wrong?”

“You know damn well what’s wrong,
Faith.”
 
He pointed to the stack of
scanned files.
 
“This isn’t on pace,
not even close to it.
 
We’ve got a
contract to fulfill here.”

“I’m sorry—“

“Sorry isn’t going to cut it.
 
You’ve been slacking big time lately and
don’t think I haven’t noticed.”

She sighed.
 
“I’ll go faster, Greg.
 
I promise.
 
I just haven’t been feeling well.”

“Then go to a walk-in clinic and get your
blood taken and see what’s wrong.
 
Otherwise, I don’t want to hear anymore excuses.
 
Get your shit together.”
 
He spun on his heel and left the
cubicle.

Faith stared up at the ceiling, wondering
if her day could get any worse.
 
She’d screwed things up with Chase Winters and now she’d screwed things
up at work.

Greg already hated her and he was always
looking for something to yell at her about.
 
Why was she giving him ammunition?

The problem was obvious, as she tried to
work faster to make up for her slow pace earlier in the day.
 

She couldn’t stop thinking about Chase.
 

She couldn’t stop the daydreams, the
fantasies, thoughts of his hands on her legs, his lips on her pussy, his tongue
sliding into her, and that large, throbbing cock of his, as it penetrated her
so deep, the orgasm…

Faith shook her head, staring at the
scanner. The pages had started to go through and she hadn’t been
watching—again—and she’d missed a staple.
 
As a result, the pages had gone through
all at once and started ripping and getting caught in the machine.

“Shit,” she muttered, opening the scanner
and pulling one of the caught pages out.
 
She looked at it and saw that it was wrinkled and torn and nearly
unreadable.

Taking a deep breath and composing
herself, Faith shook off the nerves and worries and tried to put Chase Winters
out of her mind.
 
She had a job to
do and she couldn’t throw everything away over a one-night-stand with a guy, no
matter how big a stud he might be.

And she got back to work.

***

Faith didn’t hear from Chase the entire
rest of the week.
 
It became
torture, in a sense, to even hold or look at her phone.
 
The phone itself was a reminder of their
night together, and the lack of any calls or texts from him made it that much
more clear that he didn’t intend to ever see her again.

She thought about texting him constantly,
and on more than one occasion, she wrote a text out and her finger hovered over
“send,” but each time she lost her nerve or talked herself out of doing it.

On those occasions, which usually
occurred at night when she was alone and particularly sad—Faith would
instead text her sister, Krissi.

Krissi would start bitching about home,
Mom and Dad and their drinking and fighting.
 
And Faith, as usual, would tell her
younger sister that everything was going to work out and to just be patient,
even as she herself was starting to lose hope that it was true.

Maybe
things don’t just work out
,
she thought that Saturday night, as she and her sister texted while Faith
listened to sports radio in the background.
 

Maybe
things just stay as they are or get worse.

She was down in the dumps, and it wasn’t
helping that she was watching Sports Center and listening to sports radio talk
shows all day and night instead of doing something productive, such as working
out or maybe trying to write a new story.

Faith had been writing since she was a
kid, but these last couple of years, she’d started to lose her passion for it,
as adult responsibilities and worries had replaced much of her free time to
dream and make believe.

After taking a break from texting with
Krissi, she pulled out her laptop and opened her word document.
 
She had about two thousand words of a
story that she’d begun writing last month and had made very little progress on
it since.