Hired

by Zoey Castile

Faith climbs on top of me, her luscious tits pressed against my chest. She’s got a face that was etched by the hand of God, and when she sits up and sits on my cock, I’m blinded by her beauty.

  I arch my back to push into her tight cunt, and she pushes right back. I lick my finger and bring it to the cluster of nerves at her center. She moans harder when I rub her little clit, and she sinks so completely against my dick that I tremble at being all the way inside her. She reaches for my hands, shuts her eyes, and holds on. She rocks against my dick, her breasts bouncing so much that I do a full fucking sit-up just to take one into my mouth and suckle on it.

  She screams with the shift of my dick, like I’ve found a part of her that makes her wilder, wetter. She holds me tight, and I’m afraid I’ve hurt her.

  “Don’t stop,” she begs, her voice climbing half a dozen octaves. “So good, don’t stop.”

  I’ve had a lot of sex and I know what gets me off. But never, in all my life, has a single sharp cry made me want to come so fucking hard. I grab her by her shoulders, her legs are draped around me, and I press her down on me. I choke on my own pleasure as she tightens, writhes like a snake, the ripple of a wave reaching out to snatch me, and then I’m coming hard and long inside of her and she’s crashing and tightening around my dick so hard that it’s like she’s drawing the life out of me with her pussy.

  We collapse onto each other for a moment. Just in time for the door to knock with our food.

  Food that goes cold because she unwraps another condom and I’m so ready to lose myself in this woman that I don’t care if I starve.

  18

  Heartbreaker

  FAITH

  Sleeping tangled in Aiden’s bed is terrifying because of how normal this feels. He sleeps on his side, his lips slightly parted, his hair flopped over the side of his face. I’m not sure why I can’t sleep. I should be tired, and I am, but part of me is wired with feeling. All feelings all the time. I don’t think I like feeling like this. His hand is pressed on the soft skin of my belly, and for the briefest moment I think of what it might look like in a different time. A time when my belly is expanding with life, his and mine.

  That’s why I can’t sleep. Because I can’t deal with thoughts like that. I’m not sure where my career is taking me, but fantasizing about having a baby with a guy I just met isn’t in the cards. Even if that guy is as sweet and kind and giving as Aiden. I suppose it also helps that he has a big dick. It rests against my thigh, and I reach out to trace the tender pink head. My pulse thumps at the base of my throat. My thighs ache and I feel rubbed raw in the best way.

  I giggle at the thought of waking him up with kisses. I love the way he reacts to my touch. At the movement of my ribs, he mutters something, and then turns around in his sleep. He takes his arms with him, and I know I shouldn’t miss someone who is three inches away from me.

  But I do.

  I miss Aiden filling my best parts with his. The way my heart plummets through my stomach when I’m near him, when I think of him. He’s going to stay with me for a week and then what?

  Are we just these moments to be remembered some time later? Are we helpless to what’s prewritten in the universe, some cards stacked and shuffled and drawn at random?

  The idea that we don’t end up together makes my chest ache in a terrible way. That’s why I can’t sleep.

  So I sneak out. I write a note and brush a kiss on his cheek. Then I dress and head out of the hotel at seven in the morning. There are still people partying, and for the second time in my life, I’m one of those stumbling home after a long night in the Quarter.

  Angie would be proud, I think. My mother would give me a quiet stare and tell me to think of our image. My daddy—well—he doesn’t seem like the murdering kind, but I don’t believe he’d approve of the way I act when I’m with Aiden. Reckless. Wild. Impulsive. He brings out a part of me that I never let myself explore. I wonder, am I confusing this adventure with—love?

  I shake the thought as I get into my car and drive home. I pick up a giant iced coffee at the Dunkin’ Donuts drive-through and scarf down a Sausage Egg & Cheese. This is a series of firsts. The first time I’m driving home after a long night of sex. It’s actually not even safe for me to drive right now because I might close my eyes, close my legs at the thought of Aiden. Aiden Peñaflor, who can move his hips better than any man I’ve ever met. It’s the first time I’ve wanted to rip a condom off someone, to feel them bare and unobstructed inside me. The first time I’ve had six orgasms in one night.

  The first time I’ve left before the other person woke up.

  The first time I wanted to say Screw it all—the election, the pressure, the expectations—and just get back into bed with Aiden, where everything is safe and good.

  The first time I nearly shouted “I love you” while I was in the middle of coming.

  I pull into my driveway and do a double take. The front porch definitely has the furniture I bought over the summer, and the lawn ornaments are being eaten alive by my front grass, so I know it’s my house.

  But there’s someone waiting for me on the porch chair where I like to read my paper and drink my coffee on most mornings. Mornings that are not today. I grab my half-eaten breakfast sandwich and my coffee, the warm day melting the ice already.

  The woman sitting there looks familiar, but I can’t place her.

  Not at first.

  She doesn’t belong in this memory I’m trying to create. One of cozy postcoitus whispers and the man of my dreams.

  “Something I can help you with?” I ask Betty LePaige. She’s not in her usual body-hugging colorful suits, clutching that irreverent notepad between fingernails sharpened to look like claws. You have to have claws in an industry where you can’t always trust your sources, I suppose. That’s why I always preferred animals, water, earth. For their constancy.

  Betty stands when I get to the top of the porch. In modern gym clothes, and with her hair still wrapped up in a scarf, I can tell she must have rushed out of her house. A visit at seven thirty in the morning isn’t casual or even friendly. Nervousness floods my gut like a sputtering volcano. There’s an envelope in her hand. The flat kind that people usually slip under doors or pull out of trench coats in the middle of parks, depending on what movie you’re watching.

  “Is this about my mother?” This is the first time I’ve raised my voice at a stranger.

  She stares at me, a small but imposing woman. “In a way. I have something that concerns you.”

  “Me?” I glance around the street. Some of my neighbors are walking their dogs, taking themselves out for a jog before the day gets too hot. “Come inside.”

  “I won’t stay long,” she says, but still follows me in when I open the door. My eyes rarely leave the envelope in her hand.

  This is the first time I’m afraid of what an envelope may hold.

  Not even when I got into my undergrad and grad programs was I afraid, because I knew I had the grades and I had the recommendations. I was good on paper.

  “What is this about?”

  “I want to be honest here and start off by saying that I’ve been hired by the Moreauxs to find a story on you.” She crosses her hands in front of her, the envelope still clutched in one.

  I try to think of what I could have done. Aiden. Taken Aiden to the refuge, to the nightclub. I press my hand on my chest to steady my heart. It couldn’t be pictures from that night at the blackout, because they would have surfaced sooner. Me with my mouth on a man’s crotch in public, albeit pitch black. Me getting fucked against a wall in a brand-new room where the furniture hadn’t even been put together. Me going into a hotel room and leaving so early in the morning.

  “Why would they ask you that?”

  “Because your mother is clean. Your father has nothing in his past worth mentioning. And they’re getting desperate. Your mother is polling higher than he is by thirty percent. They want something. Anything.”

  “And that right there is what w
ill upset them?”

  “It’s about that boyfriend of yours.”

  I scoff, put on my best imitation of my mother. “The people of New Orleans won’t care about a former male entertainer.”

  Betty raises her eyebrow but doesn’t smile. “Perhaps not. But I believe they would be interested in this. Something that the Moreauxs are not prepared for.”

  She’s holding that envelope right in front of my face, and so I snatch it. I press it against my belly. Aiden’s hand was just there.

  “So what? You’re going to try to sell this to both sides? I suppose you have multiple copies.”

  “Contrary to what you might think of me, Miss Charles, your mother is a great inspiration to me. I took her humanities course when I finally decided to go back to school. No one has this photo. It’s the only copy. I deleted the file, but I have others. Like I said, the Moreauxs won’t want that getting out, even if they’ve already paid me for my labor.”

  “What do you mean?” I’m trying to wade through the sludge of her words. What wouldn’t the Moreauxs want to see?

  “I’m sure I’ll see you soon,” she says, and leaves me standing here.

  I don’t lock my door. I don’t do anything at all except hold this thing in my hands. I know that I have to look at it. I know that I will look at it eventually.

  So why can’t I?

  I shut my door and take my breakfast to my bed. I don’t bother to wash my face or get out of my clothes. I take long, even breaths because it’s like being asked to look at the way you might die, to stare into something that might hurt you, and I’m not ready for that.

  My phone buzzes, and I know that it’s Maribelle reminding me that I have to be at the offices today. Has it been only a week? Or, it’s Aiden noticing that I’m gone and reading my note.

  My whole mouth is dry as I slide my finger under the sealed tape. I get a paper cut and suck it until it no longer stings.

  Inside there’s a single photograph. It’s dark; the outline of the camera’s flash gives them the look of being caught in headlights. But they’re not looking at Betty’s camera, only each other. Virginia Moreaux and Aiden sitting together. She’s facing the camera. Aiden has his back to it, but I know it’s him even with the sliver of the profile. So close I know it’s not an accident. So close that I can see his hand on her knee. The hands that were all over me last night and that night. Because I realize that he’s wearing the charcoal-gray suit he wore on our date when we were both running behind schedule. When he seemed off and strange and I made excuses because I wanted to kiss him, to have his eyes only on me. I wanted to be his in a way that was primal and urgent. I wanted a man who has been lying to me, who was going to hurt me to the point of no return.

  I’ve made a mistake.

  I drop the photo and climb into bed.

  This is the first time my heart breaks so deeply that my body shuts down and I fall into a heavy sleep.

  19

  Si Una Vez

  AIDEN

  Faith is gone when I wake up. I search for her in the blankets of the king-size bed, but all I find is a piece of paper. For a moment I think that she’s come to her senses and decided that she doesn’t want me to stay in her house or meet her family. I’m always waiting for the other shoe to drop like that. But instead, her neat, slanted handwriting says:

  Have to run errands for my mom.

  Meet me at my place for dinner.

  ♥

  Faith

  I trace the outline of that heart. Is this what Fallon feels all the time when he’s with Robyn? Because it’s kind of nice even if it’s ridiculous smiling to myself when no one’s looking.

  The clock on the bedside table blinks 8:00 a.m. in red letters. When I get to the living room, there’s a tray of food on the dining table. I lift the covers and help myself to a couple of bites of the burger. I pick the tomatoes off the salad, load them with salt, and call that a very unhealthy breakfast. Faith’s grilled chicken looks sad in its little salad.

  My phone is buzzing somewhere in the room, and it takes me a little while to find it.

  Fallon: Get your ass down here to the gym.

  Me: Good morning to you, too sunshine.

  But I pull on my gym clothes. I make a pile of suits that I’ll drop off at the hotel’s dry cleaners. I suppose I can do the rest of my laundry when I get to Faith’s later tonight. I splash some water on my face and look at myself in the mirror. There’s a mark on my chest where Faith got a little too excited. I don’t usually like things like that, especially in my line of work. You can’t show up to a woman’s house covered in someone else’s love bites.

  I don’t want to show up at anyone’s house other than Faith’s. It’s the scariest thought I’ve ever had. When would a guy like me think he could be with someone like her? We come from different worlds. I know I could never keep up with the politics and the kinds of conversations well-to-do folks have. But I’ve been around enough bored housewives and heiresses that I’ve learned how to fake it well enough. I don’t have to lie about myself. If anything, people love an immigrant story that has a happy ending. It’s the other kinds that no one wants to hear about.

  Is that what I am? A happy story?

  My mind flashes to my mother’s last moments. It’s been nearly a decade, and everything from that day swells within me. How she was dying and my father was out there getting drunk. How my tía Ceci told me where he was and that was the moment I snapped. Skinny as fuck and weak. I still went into that black-tinted-windowed bar on Hillside Avenue where my father was sitting. He was laughing into this woman’s neck. I can still smell her rank perfume, her flesh spilling out of her spandex dress. My father’s cigarette on the ashtray.

  So I hit him. I hit him and it didn’t even do anything. It was like a fly running into a glass window. He only brushed me off with his fist, and I wasn’t strong enough to get back up or defend my mother. He always liked to tell us that we ruined his life, but I don’t think he understood that all my mother did, all we ever did was try to love him until we finally decided to stop.

  After that I walked back to the hospital with a bloody nose and a fat lip, and I never saw him again. Tía Ceci heard from some friend of a friend that he went back to Colombia, and I wonder, how different would our lives have been if only he’d left earlier? But it was like my mother held on. I promised myself that being in love with someone like that—it was something I couldn’t do. So I didn’t let anyone get close. I made these rules. I told myself that no one gets hurt if there are rules in place.

  But where did that get me? Celebrating my birthday, getting drunk alone in a foreign city.

  Faith walking in was my saving grace. If I stay, if I want to truly be with her, I know I have to come clean about everything. Otherwise she’ll always be with a stranger, no matter how close we get. No matter how much I love her.

  My phone buzzes again. Fallon sends a couple of gym related emojis.

  Me: Be right down, DAD.

  Fallon: *middle finger emoji*

  I shoot Faith a text as I grab my key card and head down.

  Me: Mi reina. I got your note. See you tonight <3

  The gym is empty except for some of the guys. I’ve always been amazed at the dedication they put in even after a night out drinking. Fallon, Patrick, Vin, and Gary are spread out around the weight machines.

  “Eyyyy,” Vin shouts. He shakes my hand and we hug, slapping each other on the back. “Sorry I missed you last night. I was at this strip club. They don’t wear panties here, man. Have you been?”

  I laugh and grab a towel, shake my head as I get to a weight rack. “Nah, man. I’ve been busy. How’s your brother?”

  Vin’s twin brother also dances with Mayhem City. The only way I can tell them apart is when they’re shirtless, because Vin’s got tattoos all across his ribcage.

  “He’s good. Keeping busy in Vegas. We miss you, man.”

  “I’m sorry, guys,” I say, and I feel a different kind of peac
e knowing that they forgive me. Ricky asked me back. Faith and I are getting dinner tonight and then moving in, for a week. Everything’s coming up for Aiden Rios.

  “Though with you gone I got center stage,” Pat says, twirling on his toes and making a dirty hand from his dick to me.

  Gary makes a hissing sound with his teeth. “You don’t need no center stage. Dude’s face is in every airport in the country.”

  Pat stands in front of the mirror with a set of fifty-pound dumbbells. “And Canada.”

  “Wait,” I say, starting by stretching my legs. “I’ve been gone a little while. Why is your ugly Viking mug in every North American airport?”

  “Didn’t you get the newsletter?” Fallon says, sarcasm clinging to his every word. “Patrick Halloran is no longer just headlining a male revue, but he’s a cover model.”

  “Got signed by the biggest agency in LA, too,” Pat says.

  “This Thor mothafucka,” Vin says. “You almost didn’t do that photo shoot.”

  I grab a bar and load it up with plates. I can’t actually remember the last time I went to the gym so I don’t go too heavy.

  Pat stares at his face in the mirror. He’s got the kind of face that always looks freshly shaved. He was in Mayhem City a season before I was, but never made it to New York—out in Los Angeles chasing a modeling gig that went nowhere. He met up with us in Vegas, and the rest is history.

  “This woman came to the show,” Pat says, looking at me through the mirror with those green eyes. “Got a VIP pass and all. We got to talking and she asked me to be her cover model. I thought, sure why not?”

  “Anything for a fan,” Gary says, raising his voice to mimic Pat.

  But Pat only grins his perfectly straight teeth. “Anyway, practically overnight her book is number one on the New York Times bestseller list. That’s how they rank sales.”

  Fallon throws his towel at Pat’s head. “We know that, asshole.”