Wicked Ride (18 page)

“You’re fucking
kidding me?” I ask, totally in shock that this sweet woman
could be so devious.

“When I got older—became
an adult—I did things that would disgust you,” she says
softly, her gaze finally falling.

Even though my stomach turns at
the thought of what she might reveal, I reach across the expanse
between us and take her hand in mine. “I
assure you, nothing you can say will disgust me. I’d already
figured you were conning someone out of money for fake virginity.”

She gives me a sad smile, and
with a small voice says, “I’d
go into a bar and find a lonely looking guy with a wedding ring…”

I have to swallow hard to
suppress the growl that wants to come out.

“I’d flirt…
get him interested. If he were local, I’d flirt harder. He’d
have a few drinks and get bold, and then we’d make plans to go
to a hotel together, because even though he loved his wife, he was
still hot and horny for a young girl he met in a bar.”

She stops, plays with the bottle
some more, and I realize she’s
embarrassed.

“Go on, Auralie,” I
tell her gently. “Let me hear it.”

“We’d go outside…
wait for a cab, and I’d let him kiss me. I’d get him in a
compromising position, and then Gus would come up on us and start
taking pictures. The mark would notice and get upset, asking Gus what
he was doing. Gus would admit to being hired by the man’s wife
who suspected he was cheating—”

“But the wife really
didn’t?” I ask for clarification.

“No,” she says with a
wry smile. “I was just really good at picking marks who I knew
had probably cheated on their wives and so it would not seem out of
character for the wife to have hired an investigator.”

God, that’s
fucking insidious.

“At any rate, inevitably,
the man would offer Gus “more money than the wife paid”
in exchange for the pictures. One time we got five hundred in
exchange for the SD card in the camera.”

“Damn,” I say in
wonder, as I had no clue this shit went on. I mean, why would I? My
life in Chicago was charmed. “And you did this every day?”

She shrugs noncommittally, I
think perhaps feeling she’s
said too much and has put me off. So I try to get her back on track
to something that would be easier to talk about. “You said you
were looking at going to college?”

“Yes,” she says with
a quavering voice. “I told my dad and Magnus I wanted out. Dad
let me happily go. Magnus wasn’t so easy to convince, but he
ultimately agreed.”

“How does Magnus fit into
your life?” I ask.

“Well, that’s an
interesting story,” she tells me, “but I’d like
another Coke first.”

Auralie

I do not get another Coke first.

Logan puts the fire out and takes
me back into the trailer where he fucks me again. Well, actually, he
has
me
fuck
him
,
rolling to his back and having me straddle him.

“Ride me, Auralie,”
he commands with glittering eyes.

And I do.

I sink down onto that gorgeous
cock, and I ride him until both of us are gasping and shaking and
practically seizing it’s
so good. After I come and he comes and our breath regulates—he’s
still planted inside of me although I feel him starting to go soft
because I don’t feel as full—he says something that
surprises me.

“We fucked up.” His
warm palms resting on my thighs are meant to feel reassuring, but his
words are chastising.

“What do you mean?” I
ask fearfully, feeling the weight of catastrophe hanging over us.

“We had unprotected sex,”
he mutters. With eyes locked on me somberly, he adds, “I never
do stupid shit like that. Twice now… out of control with you
and taking risks that are just plain idiotic.”

I can’t
tell if he’s pissed at himself, me, or both of us, but I
hesitantly say, “Logan… I’ve never been tested,
but I’ve never had unprotected sex before either, so I’m
confident I’m safe. But I’d be lying to you if I said I
was out of control like you and didn’t think about it. Because
I did think about it… when I told you I wasn’t a virgin,
I figured you’d be fucking me pretty quickly. I did nothing to
slow this down. I let you slide into me without a worry.”

Logan swallows as he understands
what I’m trying to
say. “You trusted I wouldn’t expose you to anything.”

“Yes,” I whispered.
“I trusted you.”

And I did.

Apparently, he trusts me, even
though I’ve proven
myself to be a liar and exposed myself as someone who routinely
cheats in life. But he trusts me because he says as he lifts me off
his dick and rolls me to his side, “Then we’re good.
We’ll keep fucking without condoms, because I have to say,
baby… that was fucking amazing.”

I giggle and nod, very happy with
this mutual understanding, but then something occurs to me. Logan
goes to The Silo, and he does so to fuck random women. Does this mean
he’s giving that up?
Or will he continue to do that but just wear condoms with other
women?

The thought of him being with
someone else causes my chest to constrict painfully, and yet I really
can’t say anything
about it because I have a con to pull off. That means I’ll be
back in The Silo soon with random dick down my throat.

That thought causes nausea to
well up inside of me.

“Okay, tell me about
Magnus,” Logan says as he leans up briefly in the bed to pull
the sheets and blanket up over us. He lies back down on his side
facing me and waits patiently for me to put this all together.

“Probably about ten years
ago, my father went to work for Magnus,” I say, telling him how
it all started. “And by work for him, I mean he helped Magnus
pull off some longer cons, and yes… he made more money than he
was doing on his own. We were struggling, trying to make enough money
to survive. By that time, my dad had been living that life so long,
he had no real work experience. I wasn’t able to do much with
going to school. Going to work for Magnus, who had what seemed like a
bazillion cons just waiting to be tapped, just seemed like the
natural thing to do. It was like money growing on trees for us.”

“You said your dad did
apartment management,” Logan points out, and yes, I did tell
him that at dinner that first night we went out.

I give him a wry grimace. “Yeah…
that wasn’t exactly true. He managed an apartment scam.”

“Oh-kay,” he says
slowly with a disbelieving shake to his head. “I’m going
in. What does that mean?”

“He’d take an ad out
on like Craig’s List, and list an apartment for rent. Take
first and last month’s deposits. When the people show up to
move in, they find out that the apartment is not for rent and is, in
fact, owned by someone else.”

“Jesus,” he mutters
in astonishment. “The stupidity of people sometimes. Did you
ever feel guilt for what you were doing?”

“Sometimes,” I tell
him simply while holding his stare without an embarrassed lowering of
my eyes. “Sometimes not. It was my way of life. It was how I
helped pay things like the electric bill and put food on the table.
It’s all I knew.”

Logan looks at me in such a way…
almost as if he’s terribly sad for the way I’ve lived my
life. I think he’s conveying to me,
I
have to wonder what you could have become had you been taught a
value’s-based way to lead your life.

I answer him out loud. “I
wonder all the time what I could have been.”

He gives me a soft smile, leaning
in to kiss me gently before pulling back. “I
still don’t get what Magnus could do for your dad that he
couldn’t do for himself?”

“Magnus could pull off more
complex stuff… that requires set up and time, usually other
people involved. It also has a better payout. For example, Magnus had
a pretty big mystery shopping con going. He’d send a fraudulent
check to a mystery shopper, enough to buy a nice item, but more than
the price of said item. Mystery shopper deposits the check. Part of
the mystery shopper’s agreement is that they had to return the
difference by wire immediately upon purchase and they were being
timed on responsiveness. This ensured the mystery shopper would
purchase the item quickly and then wire the difference back.”

“Money gets wired and
picked up,” he hazards a guess, “before the fraudulent
check bounces.”

“Yup,” I say in a
matter-of-fact tone. “Magnus had my dad manage those more
complex cons. He’s always been good with numbers and
multi-tasking. It was almost like a management position for Magnus.
And when I say manage those cons, I mean Magnus had hundreds of
grifters working for him all over the city. They paid him
commissions, and he got rich from their labor with none of the risk.”

“And your dad oversaw all
the cons being run and tallied the money for Magnus?” he sums
it up.

“Yeah… that’s
what he was supposed to do,” I affirm bitterly, and that leads
us up to what brought me into his life.

“What did your dad do?”

I shift my body, curl my arm
under the pillow where my head is resting, and tilt my head so I can
maintain eye contact with him. “I
mentioned I wanted out. I was tired of that type of life, and, unlike
my dad, I was still young enough I could do something different. I
wanted to go to college, but I had no clue what I wanted to be. I
just knew I didn’t want to scrape by with that type of life.”

“You said they both agreed
to let you out.”

I nod. “My
dad very happily, actually proud I wanted to go to college. Magnus
wasn’t so happy because I was good at what I did, but he had
plenty of people working for him. I was just getting ready to enroll
in college when I came home to the apartment I shared with Dad and
found Magnus and one of his goons there with my dad. Apparently, my
dad’s books weren’t quite adding up, and Magnus assumed
he stole from him.”

“Did he?” he asks.

“Yeah… later told me
he skimmed just enough to help me with tuition. But he was so good at
moving and hiding money, and cooking the spreadsheets to reflect what
he wanted, Magnus really couldn’t pinpoint it so he couldn’t
know for sure my dad stole from him.”

“But I’m guessing he
wasn’t letting it go,” he surmises.

“Nope. Wasn’t letting
it pass. My dad got roughed up, and I immediately offered to make it
up to Magnus. I walked right into his trap.”

“His trap?”

“He had this con already
cooked up,” I explain as I shift my legs, which causes my shin
to brush against his. His eyes darken just from that slight touch,
and tingles shoot up my spine in response.

While Logan’s
eyes say,
I want to
fuck you again
, I try
to ignore it so I can finish my explanation. “Magnus
found out about this club and was going to sell off a fake virgin. He
needed someone who looked young, sweet, and virginal to serve as
shill.”

“Did he even know your dad
took money or was it a stab in the dark?” he asks in wonder.

“I think it was a stab in
the dark,” I murmur glumly, but I’m very impressed that
Logan’s sort of got Magnus figured out a bit. “But I
wasn’t about to take the chance.”

“Chance with what?”

“That my dad would go
poof
,”
I say simply.

“Excuse me?”

“My friend, Gus… the
one who ran scams with me on the street? Well, he skimmed money off
the top before he paid Magnus his share, and
poof
…
he just disappeared.”

He blinks at me in surprise.
“You’re saying
Magnus killed him?”

I laugh darkly and try to keep
the venom in my voice to a minimum. “Magnus
doesn’t have the balls to do his own dirty work, but yes…
I’m saying Magnus ordered it. He has plenty of muscle who will
gladly carry out those orders.”

“And you think he’d
kill your dad?” he asks, understanding my need to see this con
through to the end in one bright, clarifying moment.

“I do,” I whisper. “I
think he’d do it. Oddly, I think he’d hate it, but he’d
do it. At least, that was his very clear threat to me if I don’t
hold up my end of the bargain.”

Logan’s
silent for a moment, trying to digest what I’ve told him, but
it’s really pretty simple in my opinion. My father’s life
is at stake, and I’m willing to perpetuate a pretty big fraud
to ensure he remains safe.

“It’s the only reason
I’d ever get on my knees and suck a stranger off, Logan,”
I say apologetically, because while I know I’m a rotten person
for doing this, I don’t want him to be disappointed in my
choices. His eyes jerk to mine, and I hate that they’re holding
pain for me. “I’m not that type of girl. I might have
done a hell of a lot of cheating and lying in my life, but I’ve
never peddled my body like that. I hope you believe me.”

He doesn’t
speak but rather reacts. His arms shoot out and wrap around me,
pulling me in close to him. My face settles in the crook of his neck,
and one of his large hands comes to the back of my head to hold me
there. “Hey… don’t even go there. I know exactly
what type of girl you are, and you’re a survivor. Nothing
more.”

“I’m sorry I lied to
you,” I mumble against him, my lips gliding over his skin. “I
never wanted to do that.”

“I get it,” he
reassures me, and sadly, I know one reason he gets it is because he’s
hidden things from me. But that’s a discussion for another
time.

We lay silent for a few moments,
but then he asks, “How
exactly were you going to get past the fact you are, in fact, not a
virgin?”

“Simple,” I say
softly. “Magnus has fake medical records proclaiming my hymen’s
intact, and I’m merely going to drug the mark before we can get
to the sex part. By the time he wakes up, Magnus and I will be long
gone from Wyoming.”

“Someone losing that type
of money will come after you both,” he points out darkly.