Touch Slowly (Red Light: Silver Girls series) (16 page)

"I'm thirty-six years old." He lowered his chin. "It depends on why you're making excuses for what we both want to happen and why you feel the need to wait."

She placed her hand on his chest. "I'd like to go slow."

"Let me ask you a question now." He pulled her along before he kissed her again. "Has someone treated you badly? Is that the reason why you're skittish on doing more than kissing me?"

"No, no, nothing like that." Her hand went back inside his pocket. "There're reasons why I need to wait, that's fair to both of us, and I need time to finish a few personal things."

Without missing a step, he absorbed the information. She gave him little to go on, and yet he couldn't help thinking she gave him enough to figure out what went on in her head, and he still missed some vital clue.

"You've reminded me several times that your time here is limited." He stopped in front of his trailer. "I don't like waiting."

"I'm sorry, but—"

"Nova, I said I don't like waiting, but I will if this is important to you." He massaged her neck, holding her close.

"Why?" She gazed up at him. "Why would a man who probably has a whole town of women fighting for his attention treat me special after everything I've done to show you how inconvenient I am to your life?"

"Because a few hours with you makes my whole week. You got that? You don't worry about me. Concentrate on yourself, so this can happen sooner rather than later when I don't have time to enjoy you because you're hightailing it out of Federal." He lifted his chin and urged her to walk again. "Come on. You need to see something before you leave."

She nodded, staring at him as if she worried he'd change his mind. He walked her through the crowd outside in the yard and in his front door.

In his living room, he went to his desk and rifled through the drawers until he found what he was looking for, and returned to Nova.

"What you created out there on that wall reminded me of this picture. It was taken last summer." He handed her an eight by ten inch photo. "A couple of us rode up the mountain on our ATVs to take a picture of the park from above. Mouths started flapping as soon as we left and when we stopped on the south slope, everyone from the park had gathered in my yard."

"Oh, my God. It's almost exactly like what I painted," she said, studying the photo.

"I hope you know how impressed I am by what you painted tonight. It means a lot to me, and I know everyone here will enjoy seeing it tomorrow."

She lifted her gaze. "This is wonderful. I can see Nick wearing his Ford baseball cap and Shayla standing in the bed of the pickup."

"Keep it," he said.

"Oh, I couldn't do that." She tried handing the picture back.

He shrugged and refused to take it. "We've now got the real picture of the park. You keep that as a memory of what you found here."

She tilted her head. "What have I found?"

"I guess that's what we'll both find out, right?" He leaned in and kissed her.

Her fingers went to his hair. He cupped the back of her head, and when he pulled out of the kiss, he held her from swaying back on her heels and leaving him.

"That right there, Nova-girl," he whispered. "That right there is what we've found."

Her body pitched toward him, and she sighed a happy sound. "I do need to get going. It's late or early, however you want to look at it. The sun will be up shortly."

"Will you come back tomorrow night?"

She nodded slowly. "Yeah. Yeah, I'll come back."

He walked her outside. She turned and hugged his middle, pressing her cheek against his chest. He palmed her head, holding her against him, protecting her for the moment. A moment that she gave him, and hoped she found the strength in herself to give him more.

A
man— Joe, the fourth Joe of the week— sat atop the throw rug on Nova's bed in the green room. Nova stood naked in front of him. He'd requested the sitting position with her facing away from him. An unusual request for men who preferred her dominating over them, but the promise of a large tip changed her mind on sticking with the basic rules.

If he wanted to ignore the fact she had a face and that she was an actual person outside of sex, she was fine with that. It made the whole session easier for her to ignore.

"Lean back, brace your hands on the rug. I will do the work. Do not touch me." She looked down at the condom covering his cock. The extra latex at the tip pulsed with his arousal.

Joe braced himself on the bed. She lowered her lashes and turned, widening her legs and straddling his thighs. Her face hidden from his view, she dropped the sleepy-eyed look and stared at the far wall where a picture of a half-naked lady lounged on a loveseat—totally cheesy and common art for the nineteen seventies era.

She pushed herself on his dick. The lubrication made the act less of an intrusion and more like a ten-minute cardio workout doing squats. She pumped her legs and slid up and down. Her thighs strained through the movements. Caught up in the strength required of her, she counted each dip.

One.

Two.

Three.

Her work benefitted her health and gave her a tight ass and thighs of steel. She rolled her eyes at her common sense while in reality, men fantasized about her.

Four.

Five.

Six.

The tightening burn showed up in the front of her thighs before she worried about being on the clock. Her toes dug into the carpet, and her heartbeat accelerated. Counting all her sessions with the customers today, she'd had a good fifteen-minute workout six times this evening, and probably burnt close to five-hundred calories. That's not counting the blow jobs.

Whatever Marci and Tiff planned for dinner, she was going to eat her fill. She'd earned her reward.

Joe's hand swept the curve of her hip. She continued moving and gazed over her shoulder. "Do not touch me."

The verbal order excited him. He bucked underneath her and groaned out his release. She gave one last lift and moved away, grabbing her robe off the dresser.

"There's a wastebasket by the door." She watched him take off the condom and deposit it in the trash.

Thankful for the house rule that all men stay dressed, she only had to wait until Joe zipped his trousers and she could look him in the eyes and pretend the last fifteen minutes had never happened. While he would take the fantasy of visiting Red Light with him when he returned home where he existed with a wife or girlfriend, maybe even had kids, no one would guess he sought relief from a stranger in a small room who never touched him. Never asked him how he was doing. Never cared about anything but the one-hundred dollar bill he placed in the box beside the door.

Pleasure had no place in her job. Emotions never appeared. Maybe that's why she was tired of spreading her legs. There had to be more out there than providing a service without any benefits, besides money. Emmett buying her paint and letting her create her art on the wall at the park had shown her everything she missed about doing something she enjoyed and how much energy filled her when she loved a job.

The door opened, and Tiff escorted Joe out of her room. Nova pinched the corner of the rug and carried it to the full laundry basket. Tomorrow, she had to wake up early and see Dr. Brandof for her weekly checkup and testing. Tonight, she'd see Emmett.

Another knock on the door interrupted her cleaning the room of any sign of the activities she'd performed for the last four hours.

"Come in," she said, expecting one of the other ladies from the Network to check in with her after work.

Instead, Tiff stepped inside and shut the door. Nova smiled, tightening the belt on her robe.

"I need to ask you something." Tiff approached her.

"Shoot." Nova motioned to the chair. "Do you want to sit?"

"No." Tiff reached out and picked up Nova's wrist, turning her palm face down. "Do you want to explain why you have black and red paint around your fingernails and in the crease of your knuckle."

Nova's next breath failed to come. Warmth flooded her already heated body. Every possible reason escaped her, and the blatant truth stuck on the tip of her tongue. With a little more than a month left of her contract, Tiff would fire her. She counted on the money for that time to be able to purchase a house in Federal.

Instead of thinking up a plausible excuse, she tried to figure out the total amount of money she'd fall short if she could no longer work at Red Light. Was it enough? Could she afford a real home in the area? Would Shayla let her crash on the couch until she figured everything out?

"Nova, answer me." Tiff dropped Nova's hand. "I need to know where you got the paint."

Nova turned around and walked into the bathroom. Out of sight of Tiff, she paced the small room.
Think. Think. Think.

She'd washed and scrubbed her hands this morning after returning from the park. The bordello lacked any harsh cleaners or gasoline to get her hands completely spotless. She'd picked, scratched, and removed most of it, but her index finger on her right hand still bore the evidence of her escape last night.

"God, what am I going to do?" she whispered, looking at the oval sink.

Before breakfast, she'd applied bright red fingernail polish in hope that no one would notice. Her heart skipped a beat, and she hurriedly reached for the handle on the top cabinet drawer. Excitement curled in her stomach as she picked out several containers of fingernail polish—black, yellowish tan, firetruck red, and aqua, and rushed back into the room, ready to cover her transgressions.

"It's not paint," she blurted, showing Tiff the containers, then setting them on the dresser, and removed her phone out of the drawer. "There's this YouTube video I've been watching where you add several colors of fingernail polish to a cup. Then you dip your finger in and swirl it around. Once the polish dries, you rub the polish off your skin using one of those baby towelettes. I didn't have the towelettes, of course, so I tried to remove it with nail polish remover, and because it's cheap polish and not gel polish like was recommended, I made a mess that for the life of me, I couldn't get all off and kept smearing on my skin. Here, you can watch the video of how I thought it'd work."

She thrust the phone in front of her. Tiff watched a few seconds of the video and started laughing. The pressure in Nova's chest deflated and left her gasping for breath.

"I'm an idiot," she mumbled, secretly patting herself on the back over her habit of watching tutorials on her phone during her downtime.

"You can't believe everything you see on the internet." Tiff grinned and waved her hand when Nova opened her mouth. "I hope you understand I became concerned because I see a lot of things happen upstairs at Red Light. I know the Network screens each employee, and we do testing each week, but we've had ladies who come here with past addiction problems. I thought—"

"You thought I was huffing paint?" Nova shut off the phone. "I'm so sorry you worried for nothing. I probably should've said something at breakfast or lunch and let everyone at the table laugh at what happened, but honestly, I experimented and then promptly gave up the idea of doing anything fancy to my nails."

"Consider it forgotten." Tiff rubbed Nova's arm. "I had to ask. Out of all the ladies this quarter, you're the one I haven't spent much time with, and I wanted to make sure nothing remiss was going on under my roof."

"That's not your fault. I mean, not knowing me very well." Nova shrugged. "I pretty much keep to myself wherever the Network sends me. I'm goal focused, and it makes the time go faster if I concentrate on earning money."

Normally, that was the truth. She had no time or inclination to make friends with the other prostitutes. She excelled at her job because she understood that pleasing the customers brought her bigger tips.

"Well, Marci and I are here if you ever decide to chat or get bored." Tiff walked toward the door. "Dinner has already been delivered, so come and eat when you're ready."

"I will." Nova clasped her hands to keep from shaking. The letdown of adrenaline left her weak.

"Also, in case I forget to remind you tonight. You have to be up at six thirty in the morning to make it in time to the doctor's appointment." Tiff smiled and shut the door.

Nova hurried over and locked her room. She clenched her teeth wanting to scream at her outlandish lie. The disgust at hiding herself from everyone else rose to a level she couldn’t ignore. She couldn't wait until she could walk away from the Network for good.

Then, after she purchased her new home, she'd live without worry of who would see her or point her out as someone they paid to have sex with.

She could paint all the pictures that beat in her heart on the walls of her house, and no one could tell her to stop.

She could go to sleep every night, knowing she'd worked her hardest to rise above what fate handed her.

And, if she tried hard enough and loved strong enough, she could show Emmett that she had a purpose in life beyond prostitution, and he'd never leave her.

The room pressed in on her. She escaped to the bathroom, showered, and dressed for dinner. The ladies eating dinner would bring her the much-needed laughter, jokes, and comradery she needed to distract her from the two lives she found herself living. One painstakingly. The other only in her head.

S
hayla parked in front of the trailer. Rain beat against the windshield and Nova used the sleeve of her sweatshirt to wipe the passenger side window of moisture blurring her view. The clear day rapidly grew cloudier as she waited under the viaduct for Shayla and before her cousin arrived, the sky had opened up.

"Uh oh, looks like there's a change in plans." Shayla shut off her headlights.

Nova turned to Shayla. "What do you mean?"

Every time she'd come over to the trailer park, she'd spent time with everyone gathered outside. She looked forward to spending time with Emmett and hanging out with her cousins. The carefree, not to mention free, entertainment was a way of life for everyone in the park and provided Nova with a safe environment to escape to while she worked at Red Light.