“Fuck… why don’t you just tell Lorenzo you’re fed up and you want to leave?” I almost choked on the words as they left my mouth. Anger soaked onto the point of each word as I looked away from her face.
Her cheek was damp against my palm.
Valentine shook her head quickly, letting a heavy sob roll from her chest. “He’ll hunt me down like he always has… I can’t escape him.”
Her face was red, streaks of black mascara carving chasms in the painting of foundation that she had applied.
This fucking asshole. All he ever did was take… but as far as I was aware, Lorenzo was no slave trader…
He wouldn’t hold anyone against their will unless they wanted something from him.
Behind the car, blue and red lights began to flash as police arrived on the scene. I glanced at Val, only to see that panic swarmed in her eyes and her hyperventilation had transformed into quick, labored gasps for breath.
The heavy thud of a thick knuckle crashed against my window, and I angrily turned to see an officer with a large metal flashlight pointed into the car. I narrowed my eyes and pulled my hands from Valentine’s face before pressing the button to roll down the window.
“You’re parked in front of the building. We need the access point,” A big greasy man shouted at me, his face obscured from view by the bright light of the flashlight.
“Alright, alright! Get that fucking light out of my face.” I raised a hand to block thebeam from my eyes as I turned the ignition and began to pull forward away from the restaurant.
Val’s panic seemed to slowly subside as we gained distance, and she grew extremely quiet in the passenger seat next to me.
The pressure of annoyance and frustration bellowed out of my chest in a sigh as I ripped off my beanie and tossed it into the back seat, running a hand through my hair to fluff it and remove some of the trapped heat.
“Why can’t you escape him?” I asked, placing my left elbow against the door of my car and leaning my chin on the palm of my hand, eyes still forward.
She was silent for a moment, her own eyes staring straight ahead wordlessly.
“Well there must be a reason-” she cut me off.
“Someone killed my best friend.” She muttered softly, I could perceive her moving slightly, facing away from me again to stare out her window to watch the scene around us changing.
A nod, I understood that wholly and completely.
“My brother.” I said in a silent bond that we now shared. “I have been trying to find who killed him… Lorenzo is the best private detective in the state… so I signed away my life.”
She turned her head slowly back to me, those beautiful honey-brown eyes settling on the side of my face as she tried to read my expression. I turned my own head slightly in response and gave her a kind nod.
“Same… I want to find the person who pushed her in front of a train two weeks before her baby was born.” Valentine closed her eyes in a slow, labored blink and then faced her head straight to the road again
She seemed exhausted, “Lorenzo makes me…” Her voice caught in her throat, like there was something she wanted to say but her body told her not to.
I allow her the space to think, but I couldn’t help but wonder what the hell Lorenzo had made her do. If it was anything like what he made ME do… it was sick and twisted.
She shifted in her seat again as she saw familiar surroundings growing nearer, “We are going to Lorenzo’s house?”
“Yeah, he said he had something for you,” I said plainly.
Val became quiet once again.
I loathed the silence that always managed to confine us to our separate worlds. This force that pushed us so far from one another.
The air smelled salty, like the scent of sweat and tears. My mind flashed back to earlier when I had pinned her against the seat. The way she looked at me like I had never seen before. Fear? Hatred?
And yet, as much as I loathed the silence, I think that I also reveled in it.
I craved it.
This space where we didn’t have to speak, we could simply exist.
People make such a habit of filling up empty space with pointless chatter. I liked that we didn’t have to persist with pointless chatter. That we could simply be.
That silence persisted as we entered the driveway to Lorenzo’s home, and then continued as we walked through his front door. An energy radiated off of Val like the way steam rolled off of a hot coal.
Something exciting yet reserved.
Halted.
I approached Lorenzo with a blank expression as Val slipped away from us and toward the dining room where Mags and Sasha were perched in expressive discussion.
“She looks fucking terrible,” Lorenzo commented gruffly, jabbing his meaty thumb in Valentine’s direction.
Annoyance punctured a crease in my brow, and I rolled my eyes, “Well, she might be slightly traumatized. The client she was escorting tonight went into anaphylactic shock right in front of her. I don’t blame her for being a bit of a mess right now.”
A sparkle of something menacing grew on Lorenzo’s face, and he smirked. “Neil Flemings is dead?” He inquired.
I shrugged, “not sure. The ambulance rushed him away, but Val has been fucking beside herself.”
I lifted one of my dark tattoo covered hands to tousle my hair, realizing that I had abandoned my beanie in the car during my frustration.
“Heh.” Lorenzo glanced over his shoulder, “she looks like she is haggard for another reason,” his slimy lips peeled apart to tighten into an equally slimy grin. “If you have tried to soothe her in any… special way… you’ve done it wrong.”
Valentine turned around to face us, her arms crossed over her breasts as she stared at me as if I were the one to say something so vulgar.
Her honey-brown eyes ate me alive.
“He never touched me. I had given my remote to Neil, and when he fell, he mashed the button of the remote to the highest setting.”
I found my eyes glancing at the fabric of her velvet green dress as it rested in a perfect triangle form above where her vibrator would have been attached, feeling a lump grow in my throat as I thought things that I definitely shouldn’t have been thinking.
When I reached her eyes again, she was staring into my soul. Daggers shooting deep into my pupils… like she wanted to stab me from the inside out.
Lorenzo laughed, a booming sound that ricocheted about the room in a cacophonous round before settling into our ears, “HA!” He shouted, throwing a hand over his eyes, “I thought you smelled like desire. I was thinking Cain had finally fucked you!”
I could feel the heat of her gaze explode into flames as I pinched the bridge of my nose, attempting to call my senses to return. Thank fucking God that Mags and Sasha were there.
“I think she’d be glowing if Cain finally got the nerve to fuck her.” Mags pipes up. She threw a handful of her braids over her shoulder as she grinned at me.
Okay.
Maybe not.
Valentine growled and turned away from us, sitting down in the chair next to Sasha in a huff.
“Why not make yourselves useful and help her get off?” Lorenzo called to the group of women, “Sasha knows how to make anyone cum.”
“Could you not be so vulgar?” I snapped, gritting my teeth.
Lorenzo turned to me with an eyebrow raised, “they are quite literally sex workers, Cain. If they can’t cope with the vulgarity, then maybe they are in the wrong business.”
The door behind me opened and another set of women entered the house, their driver following swiftly behind. Cole and his band of troublemakers.
These girls had clearly just returned from a show. Their faces blush laden and satisfied. The overwhelming sensation of eyes upon my visage was crushing as one of the girls approached me with a pouty look on her face.
“Cainy!” Her high-pitched, childishly sweet voice rang out. She wrapped her arms around my bicep and pressed her breasts against my arm enough to expose the majority of her skin. She smelled of a familiar chemical smell akin to something that wanted to be a strawberry, but missed the mark by a few hundred notes of scent.
I glanced down at her, a hot pink bob of hair framing her chubby face. “Hello Callie,” I hummed at her softly.
Her face brightened, “I missed you so much! You should drive us more often.” She cooed, pushing herself to stand on her toes to gain access to my ear, “you’d have a lot more fun with us.”
The sound of her purr as she breathed into my ear filled me with a world of conflicting feelings. Against all of my faculties, I still had to adjust myself to avoid any sign of the erection I had taken up.
“Thank you, Callie. I am sure Cole thoroughly enjoys your brand of fun.” I hum, glancing back at my friend. Today’s Hawaiian shirt had rainbow-colored cats on it.
I turned my glance to see my usual patrons at the dining room table. Each of them stared me down with their arms crossed as they watched the College Park Canaries surround me. The bouncing of silicon-filled breasts pushed harshly against the thin strings of their lingerie.
Cole stepped a bit closer, “come on now, girls. Let’s leave them to their discussions. We can have a debrief in the lounge.”
Callie’s eyes sparkled and she seemed to go rabid at the sound of this. Something told me that a debrief wasn’t exactly a debrief in the traditional sense… Maybe it was the way Callie and Sophonie rushed to clutch at Cole’s unbuttoned black and rainbow-colored shirt, or the way he lustfully gazed at them as they slipped into the next room… but most definitely, it was the sound of their moans mere seconds later as Cole managed to already slip his cock into Callie.
“Record timing,” Sasha grunted, rolling her eyes. “When I see girls like that, I remember that I am not here for the same reasons.”
Lorenzo snorts. “You prude bitches,” he rolls his eyes, “I’ve watched you finger fuck Mags until she squirted so hard that we had to pay to clean the client’s carpets.”
Sasha frowns and leans bashfully against Val’s chest.
“It’s performance art. We aren’t meant to actually enjoy it. We just have to put up with it while the crowd enjoys it,” Valentine posited.
Mags nodded quickly, “wait till those girls have to escape the clutches of a meth-fueled dickhead with a shit-smearing kink. I’m sure that bubbly shine will leave them just as it has left us.”
“All that matters is that the clients are pleased.” Sasha mumbled.
Lorenzo rolled his eyes, “Man, you really need a fucking vacation.” He snorts, “speaking of which… I have a job for you that is going to require a bit of beach time.”
In an instant, all three of the girls seem to brighten, sitting up straight as they listen to Lorenzo’s next words.
“One of my buddies is having a bachelor party. He is willing to pay for your travel in exchange for one of the usual shows as well as a private foursome.” Lorenzo smirks, “I assume your contraception is fully up to date?”
Val’s eyes darken, but the other two stand up quickly, cheering excitedly.
“I thought we agreed that the Vixens didn’t do private foursomes.” Val spat, her brown eyes darting to the side.
She was uncomfortable. I could feel it. Not because of any disdain for sex in general. It was clear that she liked to fuck. It seemed she was less so concerned with the act and more so the purpose. Her eyes lifted from the table, and they searched for me, as if hoping I would step in and stop Lorenzo from making her go through with it.
But I couldn’t do that.
She knew better than to wish that of me.
“You are to do as your told, Valentine. Your insubordination recently is absolutely appalling.” Lorenzo’s nose turned up in an annoyed grimace. “If you do anything to risk this job’s completion, you will be restricted for two months.”
“Two months?” She shouts, pushing herself up, palms flat on the table.
“My word is final. You will let him do, as he pleases, to whomever in the party, that he pleases to do it to.” Lorenzo frowns, “you are a sex worker. Not an exotic dancer. Not a stripper. a SEX worker.”
Valentine’s lips pursed, pulling her plump pink lips into a thin line as she closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath through her nose. “Fine.” She grumbled behind clenched teeth.
Sasha placed a kind hand on the small of her back and smiled at her, “it is gonna be okay, Val. We will all be there.”
I glanced at Lorenzo, a rage bubbling in my core from the way he spoke to these girls as though they were just shit on his highly polished shoes. He seemed to catch my thought and grinned at me.
“Don’t you worry your pretty little head, Cain.” Lorenzo sneered, “you have a ticket as well. My best girls have to have the best protection.”
I narrowed my eyes, “I do have a life outside of your fucked-in-the-head jobs, you know.”
“Yes. And if you would like to keep it that way, you’ll listen to what I tell you to do.” He snorted, stepping out toward the lounge as Cole’s moans became perceptible once more.
A resigned sigh left my lips and I glanced at the girls. The energy which I had used in the past 36 hours was fading faster than I was happy to admit, and I could feel my eyes grow heavy.
“Shall we go?” I queried to the three women who most frequently inhabited my car.
Val was the first to stand.
She walked quickly past me, her shoulder knocking lightly against mine as she went by. She then ducked straight out the front door. Mags and Sasha were kinder, smiling at me as they joined.
The girls crawled into the back of the car and Sasha rejoiced as she found my askew beanie resting on her seat, “Oh goodness! Is this a present from our dear Cain himself?” she giggled, pulling the knit cap over her head, sitting on the edge of her seat, legs dangling out of the door.
“I’m Cain. I’m all big and bad and covered in tattoos. I like to complain about everything and make people uncomfortable.” She mocks in a comically low voice. An action that summoned forth from me a small smile. Respite from the annoyance we had encountered already this evening.
I decided to get a bit of revenge, stooping my head below the ceiling of the back seat, a hand pressed firmly against her chest as I pin her to the seat. Her head rested in Mags’ lap as I smirked down at her and plucked my beanie from her head.
She mutters, a flustered blush growing on her cheeks as she sits up and rushes to adjust herself in the seat, “Stop. You’ll make Val angry,” she whined.
The smirk deepened, and I ripped the door to the passenger side open, dipping inside and placing a hand onto the shoulder-rest on either side of Valentine’s head, staring into her eyes in what could be mistaken for lust.
Val’s surprised stare shifted mysteriously between my arms as I locked my eyes on her. The streaks of black still caked into her makeup plainly visible as I lean in close to her and growled into her ear, “did that make you angry?”
Mags and Sasha squealed, flapping their hands about mischievously as they watched in wonder.
I expected Val to push me away, to chastise me as she always had. To frown and cross her arms. To call me a dickhead or an asshole. But she just stared. She stared right at me with a dazed look. For a second, I thought I had hurt her.
Suddenly, the blank, doe-eyed look on her face melted away and the Val that I knew returned to the surface. She growled, pressing her palm to my chest pushing me away, “Fuck off, Dickhead!”
I obeyed her order, pulling back with a nervous chuckle.
I shut her door slowly and walked around to my side of the car.
I stood there for a second before finally slipping into my own seat.
Val’s vacant expression that had lingered throughout the night, was gone now. A mix of frustration and annoyance now poised on her face, but the energy in the car was much brighter.
In the backseat, Mags and Sasha were giggling like children. A welcome change from the severity we had just been through in the outrageously opulent den of our master.
I cranked the engine and set off toward home.