“You’re gonna be taking care of Mister Arden tonight,” he said as he gave her a little push inside. “He’s a good customer, so you be good to him.”
She only hesitated a moment before getting inside. Her tiny skirt rose up and gave me a view of her little black panties. She had on stupidly high heels – like they all did – which were going to look pretty good over my shoulders. She shivered, but I didn’t know at first if the motion was from the temperature change or from nervousness.
I gave the pimp half the cash before I drove off with her. I’d owe him the rest when I brought her back, assuming she took care of me the way she was supposed to. I knew she would. However she ended up in this business, they all knew better than to piss off a client. Those who didn’t know the rules ended up in the river or the lake.
“What’s your name?” I asked. I knew what it was – the pimp had called her by her name – but I wanted her to say it.
“Bridgett,” she replied quietly. She looked down at her hands on her lap and then tried to pull her skirt down a bit. I saw her hand tremble slightly before I looked back up at the road.
“I’m Evan,” I told her. “Evan Arden. You haven’t been doing this long.”
“A while,” she responded.
“You’ve never had anyone take you home before.”
She glanced sideways at me and then shook her head.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” I told her. “That ain’t my thing. I’m an ass-man, though. You take it in the ass?”
She blinked rapidly a few times, and her fingers tensed around themselves.
“I have,” she said quietly.
Her throat bobbed up and down, and her eyes tightened along with her jaw. She’d been hurt – I didn’t have any doubt about that. Hookers often were, and I didn’t think there was such a thing as one who wasn’t broken in some way or another. This one was new, though – recently damaged.
I pulled the car over to the curb and turned sideways. Her whole body tensed up, and she pushed herself a little towards the door. I reached over and took her chin in my hands.
“Hey,” I said. “I told you I wasn’t going to hurt you, right?”
“Yeah.” She nodded rapidly as her eyes widened.
“I meant that. I got lube, we’ll go slow, and if you decide you don’t want it, we’ll stop. I can always just fuck you from behind – I’m good with that. Okay?”
She nodded again and relaxed slightly. I leaned over the console and placed my lips against hers firmly. She responded like she was on autopilot, which she probably was. After a couple of kisses, I backed away and looked her over once more as I tried to decide if she was going to be all right with this or not. She looked good, though – the right hair color, at least. Her eyes were light brown, though. I wasn’t sure what her nationality might have been, but she wasn’t Italian. Regardless, I really wanted to keep her. It was too much trouble to go all the way back and pick out another one.
“You okay?” I asked.
She nodded her head a few times, so I pulled back into traffic.
Bridgett was obviously new. She was young – maybe twenty or so – and definitely didn’t have the demeanor of a street-hardened hooker. If I was a different kind of guy, I would have just taken her to some motel and given her the night off or whatever, but I was more pragmatic than that. If I wasn’t doing her tonight, some other guy would be. Maybe he’d be a nice guy and maybe he wouldn’t, but at least she wasn’t going to get hurt with me.
At a red light, I looked over at her again, and my mind immediately began to catalog information. Long, soft-looking black hair – maybe Latino, but no accent, so she wasn’t an illegal from Mexico or Cuba or anything like that. She was dressed in the typical whore attire – red mini skirt, thigh-high stockings, black lacy top that showed her lack of bra quite clearly. Nice, big, round nipples.
“Bridgett?” I asked quietly. It took her a moment to look from the window over to me. Bridgett wasn’t her actual name, and she hadn’t been going by it for very long. People responded very quickly to hearing sounds even remotely like their own names, and her delay was far too long. “You hungry or anything?”
“No, thank you,” she replied. “I’m fine.”
“There’s a restaurant in my apartment building,” I said. “We could eat first, if you want. It’s a nice place – good food, maybe get you a drink or two? I know I could use one.”
Come on, baby – go with me here.
“If you want to,” she finally said.
Very complacent.
It was almost ten-thirty, and the full menu wasn’t available after ten, but I ordered a couple of sandwiches with chips and a beer for me. I got her one of those vodka martinis that were a lot stronger than people realized. I tried to get her to relax a bit, but she kept glancing around the restaurant.
I contemplated for a moment.
“No one here cares what you’re wearing,” I told her.
Her eyes found mine.
“I look like a hooker,” she said quietly.
No shit.
“You are a hooker,” I said. I waved my hand towards the two servers near the bar. “They all know that. They’d know that if I put you in a cocktail dress, flats, and one of those little old lady red hats, too.”
“How would they know?”
I laughed.
“Because you’re with me.”
I managed to get her to settle down a little after that, and she did eat part of her sandwich and polish off two martinis while we talked about the weather and the Chicago Fire soccer team. Mostly I talked – she didn’t seem to know shit about soccer. I finished my beer, tossed cash onto the table, and led her by the hand to the elevators. As soon as we stepped inside and the doors closed, I could feel her tension mount again, so I leaned over close to her ear.
“Not going to hurt you,” I reminded her, and my lips pressed lightly against her neck, just below her ear.
Bridgett nodded slowly but still jumped a bit when the elevator went ding, signifying my floor.
I led her out into the hallway and to my apartment door. Her eyes widened a bit as Odin came up to sniff at her. He could be a little intimidating, and he didn’t usually let people touch him. However, since he didn’t bark much, he didn’t often end up frightening anyone badly, and Bridgett was no exception. I didn’t give them much of a chance to get to know each other as I grabbed two bottles of water from the kitchen counter and brought Bridgett to my bedroom.
My foot connected with the edge of the door, blocking Odin from the show as it slammed shut. I could hear him snuffle at the crack before he gave up and moved away. Placing the water bottles on the nightstand, I sat down on the edge of the king-sized bed and started to untie my boots.
“Those look like army boots,” Bridgett observed. “A friend of mine went into the army. Are you in the army?”
“No,” I said. Her babble amused me a little. “Ex Marine. Don’t you know what ARMY stands for?”
“Um…no.”
“Ain’t Ready for the Marines Yet.”
She snickered at the lame joke, which I figured was a good sign. Laughing brought people’s guards down, and if she didn’t relax, it was going to pretty much ruin my evening. I smiled up at her, and she returned the look before walking up to me and standing between my knees.
She placed her hands on my shoulders, and I tilted my head up to meet her lips as she bent over me. She tasted like vodka and pomegranate juice in my mouth, and she felt soft and warm in my hands. My fingers moved up to her shoulders and then back down again as our tongues moved around each other.
She pulled at the hem of my T-shirt, and we broke apart long enough for her to lift it over my head. Her hands came back to my shoulders, and she stroked her fingers down my chest.
I watched her eyes as she took me in. I was used to women looking at me in the gym or even going down the street. Even in the military, the chicks I served with favored me. Women usually liked what they saw – t
oned muscles, six pack abs, no scars.
Well, none on the outside.
My captain told me I intrigued them, which was why they seemed to flock to me. I was a quiet guy – a mystery for them to solve. I didn’t know why girls ate that shit up, but he said they did and he was right. As soon as they figured you out – really figured you out – they didn’t want anything to do with you.
It was part of the reason I preferred hired company.
Bridgett’s soft lips molded against mine again, and her tongue played around in my mouth as her hands continued to explore most of my upper body. I got a good grip on her plump ass, pulled her into my lap and down against my waiting cock. Rubbing against her little thong panties felt good – too good. I needed something a little quicker for now.
“How about you blow me first?” I suggested as I pulled back a bit and loosened my belt. “It’s been a while, and I want to be able to concentrate.”
“Sure,” she said.
“Take all that off first,” I said with a flick of my finger towards her clothes. I flipped the buttons of my jeans open and slid them down my legs along with my boxers. “Leave the stockings and shoes, though. That’s hot.”
“Whatever you want,” she said with a smile. Her eyes tightened a bit as she looked at my cock, and I knew what she was thinking. I wouldn’t push her though, and she smiled up at me again like I didn’t scare her.
She faked it all well. I hoped she’d get something out of it, too.
I sat back against the headboard, and Bridgett crawled over between my legs. My fingers ran through her hair as she leaned over and took me in her mouth. Warm and wet – just what I needed. She licked around the head first, and then tried to go down too far. She gagged a little and moved back, refusing to meet my eyes as she tried again.
“Look at me, sweetheart,” I said, and she complied. “How long you been doing this?”
“I…um…”
“It’s okay,” I said. “Tell me.”
“Since Monday.”
“Shit, are you serious?”
She nodded.
“You want to stop?”
“No,” she shook her head. “I gotta make a living.”
I looked at her for a long time and wondered why I was even asking her. Since when did I care how much experience a hooker had? Even if she had been turning tricks less than a week, she might have already had more partners than I ever did.
“Go slow,” I told her. My hand moved over her cheek, and she nodded slightly before wrapping her lips back around the head of my dick. I spread my arms out across the headboard and let her make the moves. “You don’t have to take it all – just use a lot of tongue. That’s it…look at me…show me how much you love my cock.”
Her dark eyes stayed on mine as she sucked, licked, and ran her hand over what she couldn’t get in her mouth. I didn’t try to hold back, just let her work on me as my thigh muscles tightened along with my balls. The tingling sensation rose up, circled the base of my dick, and then focused through the tip of my cock as I let out a muted grunt and poured into her throat with a single thrust of my hips.
“Fuck, yeah,” I muttered. My hand passed over her hair again as her throat worked to swallow it down. She moved me back and forth in her mouth a couple more times before I placed my hand on her cheek again. “You’re good…come here.”
I gave her one of the water bottles and watched as she drank half of it down while I got my breathing under control. Maybe the asshole pimp wasn’t taking care of her like he should. That shit didn’t make sense to me. Why have expensive pieces of merchandise you can sell over and over again and not take care of them?
At least this one wasn’t strung out. I hated junkie hookers.
She placed the bottle back on the edge of the nightstand, and I pulled her to my chest. For a minute, I held her to me. Feeling her weight on top of me was kind of nice and made me feel warm and sleepy. Maybe I didn’t need the sex as much as I needed the company.
“I’m gonna sleep a bit,” I told her. “You can sleep with me if you want, or there’s a TV in the other room, cable and everything. There’s pizza in the fridge, too.”
“I could use a little sleep,” she admitted. “I don’t usually get much.”
“Hard to sleep during the day?”
“Yeah, it is.”
I shifted around until I could pull the comforter and the sheets down enough to get our legs underneath the covers and then pulled her back to my chest. She settled her cheek on my shoulder and closed her eyes. My fingers stroked through her smooth hair, and she blew warm breath over my skin.
Sleep came soon, and with the warmth of another body next to mine, it came without thought or dreams.
There was just no substitute for a good hooker.
Chapter 2 – Annoying Rival
“That’s custom.”
Jonathan Ferris tapped the police report on the laptop’s screen right above the bullet hole I left where the board member’s eye used to be. I wasn’t sure how he managed to get into classified information online, but he always had all the same info the Chicago Police Department had in its system. I wasn’t sure if the CPD realized how many people ended up with all their classified records, but Jon was the kind of guy who was brought up sharing.
“That’s what you always say,” I reminded him
“It’s always true,” Nick replied. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of you actually missing. Well, sometimes you might kill a few extras, but who’s counting, right?”
Nick Wolfe had a way of putting a lot of emphasis on various words in a sentence for no particular reason. It gave him a hippie-stoner vibe, which wasn’t totally inaccurate, but didn’t completely fit, either. The guy was a classic chick-magnet, too – both in looks and the ability to get a group of women around him and listen to him tell stories. He’d always leave with at least one of them, sometimes two. He was completely uncockblockable at a club or a bar, but that would be a whole other story all by itself.
He could also get away with shit other people couldn’t, like bringing up the reason for my exile without me smashing his face in. I had no idea what he actually did for Rinaldo, but even with all the bullshit, I liked the guy. Everyone liked him. I did narrow my eyes at him, which made him smile and laugh a little.
“Just saying, dude.”
I rolled my eyes and looked back at the computer screen.
“You’re the fucking master, Evan,” Jonathan said, and I thanked him.
It had been a pretty nice hit.
“It’s good to know you didn’t lose your touch out in the desert, Arden.” I turned towards the voice and watched Rinaldo Moretti walk into the plush office where he conducted a lot of his business. He wasn’t much to look at, my boss – average height, mostly bald, mid-fifties, a bit of a gut on him – but what he lacked in looks, he made up for in power. The man could make shit happen with a couple taps of his finger.
He was nervous about something today. Even though he walked with confidence and showed nothing in his face, there was something bothering him. The vein near his temple was beating rapidly, and his left hand kept clenching into a fist.
Behind him were two other men – Mario Leone and Terry Kramer. Mario was a huge guy – towering over my six-foot-two frame by a good five inches with enough muscle to deter most anyone from taking a stab at the boss. Of course, that was exactly why he was hired. Terry was a little wiry guy who looked like a dwarf next to the massive pile of muscle. If Mario fell over, Terry would get crushed, and it would suit me just fine if he did, too.
Leone was okay – he would sit down and have a beer with you when he wasn’t working and just shoot the shit. Terry was a whole other story. He was an obnoxious kid who rubbed me the wrong way even before he started trying to take my job.
None of them looked unusually concerned about anything – just Rinaldo.
“No, sir,” I responded automatically. I gave Mario a nod but ignored Terry completely. I took a long brea
th in slowly and silently, hoping we weren’t going to spend the entire afternoon reminding me of where I had fucked up. I’d already paid my dues as far as I was concerned.
“Good to know because this next one’s going to be a little more challenging.” He dropped his ass onto one of those big, leather executive chairs and leaned back.
“Whatever you need, sir.”
“Show him the picture.” He huffed a quiet breath through his nose and glanced away from the desk. He was annoyed with this person he wanted me to kill, no doubt about it.
Leone walked over and dropped a magazine on the desk in front of me. On the front page was a man I recognized immediately – I’d seen him in at least a dozen Bruce Willis style action films.
“Brad Ashton,” Jonathan said. “I saw him in that terrorist movie with the chick with the boobs.”
“Angelina Jolie,” I reminded him.
“Yeah – that one.”
“He’s got round the clock surveillance and never goes anywhere without a guard,” Rinaldo said. “Paparazzi follow him everywhere, too. The guy is never alone. He even fucks in pairs.”
“Makes him harder to hit,” Terry said.
Like I needed his fucking opinion.
“It’s gotta be close,” Rinaldo said as his eyes turned to me. “In his face, you know? Up close and personal.”
“I’m a sniper, sir,” I reminded him.
As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I knew I shouldn’t have said them. My eyes closed a little longer than a normal blink as I tried to reset and get my head back on straight. If I didn’t, it was likely going to get knocked from my shoulders. There was no doubt that most of my work was from afar, but I had done plenty of hits up close and personal, too.
“Whatever, dude,” Nick snickered.
Rinaldo glanced at him, and he replied with a toothy grin.
“You tellin’ me you don’t know how to shoot a handgun?” Rinaldo raised an eyebrow at me as he leaned forward a bit in the chair. “Because I happen to know you’ve done that once or twice before.”