by Jade West
But it didn’t matter. Not really.
My pussy was burning harder for another man.
Chapter Eighteen
Brandon
The afternoon was drawing to a close when Lance approached my desk with a raft of paperwork under his arm. He pulled up a seat on the other side and handed it over.
I took it with greedy hands, eyeing up the enlarged library card photo of Paige on the opening page. He’d been busy. His smug smile told me as much as he reclined in his seat with his arms folded.
“She’s a delicate little thing,” he said, and I grunted in affirmation.
I took in the header. Paige Rowan Emmerson. A Pisces from up in rural Somerset. Her smile was nervous in the photograph. Delicate, as Lance had put it so delightfully.
“I followed her this morning through lunch,” he told me. “Kept my distance but she was easy enough to keep track of.” He pulled out a fake visitors badge with the college crest in the corner. “Security isn’t up to much around these parts.” I kept staring at her picture as he cleared his throat. “Approaching nineteen. Good student. Good attendance. Studying psychology. Lives in a dorm on-site with a couple of other girls. Nothing out of the ordinary.”
“Good,” I said. “And what gems of insight did keeping track of her reveal?” I asked him, flicking through the first few pages.
I saw the answer before he had the chance to fill me in. My gut lurched like a train off the tracks, a pathetic reaction to something entirely predictable.
I recognised him, even in daylight. One of those wimpy little boys from the beach towering over her like a horny prick by a big fucking tree somewhere. He was taller than I’d given him credit for, more muscular than I’d observed when I’d floored his sorry ass. His expression was serious, his arm pressed across the pretty tits he’d pawed so greedily. His hand gripped her arm in a display of dominance, which didn’t suit the sad cunt one little bit.
“A hook-up?” I asked Lance with narrowed eyes.
He barely shifted in his seat. “Not obvious. No groping or tongue action. Just some guy, pulled her out of the library block. They talked a bit. He obviously had the hots for her. I think she likes him back.”
I flicked overleaf to find two more pictures of the same encounter. On one she was handing her phone to him. On the next he was using it as she stared up at him.
“Swapping numbers?”
“Looked like it. Setting up a date, I’d guess. You’ll have to watch out for that shit if she’s coming here.”
“I’m well aware of that, thank you, Sherlock.”
I was taken aback by the inner burst of rage at the prospect of that wimpy piece of shit chasing down a date. I should’ve shoved him a damn sight harder when I had the chance. Maybe busted a kneecap and prevented him getting back on his feet half so fucking easily.
Already I was well aware the girl was worth a fuck load more than a guy who’d grope her tits and dash away like a pussy boy when the going got tough.
“Did she leave with him?” I asked.
Lance shook his head. “Nah, she headed back to classes. Nothing more to see there.”
“Good,” I said. “There won’t be any hangers on waiting on the outside when her sixty days begin, I’ll be making sure of it.”
“There’s talk all over the fucking campus,” he told me. “Talk about shit here. Talk about serious cash for spreading your legs and taking a beating. Talk of the Emmerson girl running back to her dorm with her tits out and her arms filled with cash the other night. I’m guessing that was you.”
“Is that so?”
His expression was serious. “Seriously, there’s gossip fucking everywhere. You can thank the Lane girl for that, by all accounts, everyone is talking about her, too. They didn’t even shut up long enough to let a college visitor pass them by, most of them.” He paused. “This Paige girl has some balls on her, hanging around through that amount of bitching.”
I nodded my head at his compliment of her.
“I’ll be addressing Miss Lane’s big mouth soon enough,” I told him. “She’ll learn her fucking manners all over again.”
“I can shoot her a warning, if you like,” he offered. “Grab her for a conversation and let her know we’re onto her.”
I waved him down with a flick of my hand, not raising my eyes from the paperwork. “I’ll handle it.”
“Better handle it soon, because the rumour mill is whirring like fucking crazy. There’s not one kid on campus not talking about it.”
I shot him a look. “I’m well aware of the urgency.”
And I was.
It was simmering deep. Distaste at Rebecca Lane’s ignorant flouting of our confidentiality agreement was fit to burst, all the messier now my irritation with the college boy prick was spiking on top.
She was even more fucking stupid than I’d anticipated. The ignorant bitch hadn’t yet responded a single word to my text message.
I brushed it aside for the moment.
“What about the Emmerson girl’s sister?”
Lance leaned forward in his seat. “I had to dig pretty deep. Delve back through her family records and search potential links this whole county over. She was a slippery fish, that one.”
“And?” I prompted. “Did you come up gold on anything worth shit?”
“Gold isn’t quite the word I’d choose for it,” he said. “Phoebe Kate Emmerson. Five years older than her sister. The girl’s into drugs, both dealing and snorting. Page ten. Check it out.”
I flipped forward and sure enough the face that greeted me on page ten was obviously related to my dirty little prospect. It looked old. Some standard job agency snap clearly photocopied a few times over.
It didn’t matter. The similarities were clear enough. Same shapely lips. Same cheekbones. Same haunting gauntness I’d been so taken by in the moonlight.
She lived in the nearest shithole city along the coast. Her address was some upper apartment in the dregs of a seedy backstreet from the looks of it. Apartment 10c. The photo of the communal hallway spoke volumes.
Lance filled me in as I stared. “I got there at the crack of dawn, just in time to see her crawling back from whatever fucking shithole she was crawling from. Her nose was bleeding, crusty all over her top lip.”
“Drugs or assault?”
He shrugged. “Hard to call it. She was off her fucking tits though, and so was her cock of a boyfriend. Dean Woolston, his name is. Been inside for battery, theft and public disturbance a few times over. Late forties. Looks ready for the ground from the state of him.”
The picture of them on the street spoke volumes. His face was a pockmarked canvas of worthlessness, clothes fit for a fucking bonfire and nothing more.
It was the image of her that held my gaze. The similarities between the sisters were too pronounced to ignore. Her hair was greasy but similarly coloured, her skin blotchy but pale like Paige’s.
I remembered the insightful slip on Paige’s application. I’m a student on limited income, with needs. For my sister.
No fucking wonder if said sister was drugged up to the eyeballs.
“Debt?” I asked Lance and he took a breath.
“I’ll get onto finding out, but I’d imagine so. Their place is a shithole. Any cash in their bank account and they’d be long up and out of there.”
Mystery solved.
No wonder Paige was seeking a decent payday. Drug rehabilitation facilities worth shit don’t come cheap.
I dropped the paperwork down on my desk as a ping sounded from one of my contacts. It flashed up bold in the corner of my laptop screen.
Bingo!
“Get onto it,” I told Lance. “I want everything you can get on all three of them. Keep a solid eye on the sister. Put someone else onto it if you need to.”
“Will do,” he said, and got to his feet.
I waited until he was out of sight before I called up my latest piece of information. The message contained a link to Paige’s teleco
ms history. There was a gratuity bar looming before it let me through to the report. Greedy cunts always milked everyone dry.
I made sure I was generous enough to have them jumping to attention when I called on them next.
The report was comprehensive, everything from her call history through to her data usage and text messages. I scanned through the call log first. A few short dials that I imagined were connected to voicemail. I took a note of the number then scrolled through to text messages.
Nice to meet you in daylight, Paige Emmerson, said one from a few hours earlier. Beach boy, no doubt.
Messages to her sister followed, begging for news without a single response. Too busy snorting coke with her loser boyfriend, no doubt.
It was the ones before those that had my stomach tightening in a beat. My pulse tightened along with it as I soaked in the back and forth text details.
Please, please meet my sister before you go through with the sixty days. I really want you to hear about it first-hand before you’re all in. It would mean a lot. I won’t be able to sleep easy if you don’t.
My jaw ticked as I clocked the arrangements that followed.
Tonight.
They were meeting tonight at the pier. Seven p.m. An exchange of insight between big-mouthed Rebecca and my future sex toy. My lip twitched at the thought of them whispering the backstory girl to girl. A whole fucking depth of slack-jawed blurting that had my rage pumping hard along with my dick.
How fucking intriguing.
There was no denying it. I was enticed by Paige’s reaction to the Lane girl’s recounted stories. I couldn’t hold back my excitement at the thought of the utter filth that Rebecca would grace her sweet little ears with.
I wanted to see it. Hear it. Even fucking taste the surprise on pretty girl’s open lips.
But even more than that I wanted to kill two birds with one very big fucking stone.
I checked my watch.
Perfect fucking timing.
Eric was walking through with a takeout burger when I shrugged on my jacket and smoothed the lapels.
“Annabel will be performing later than usual this evening,” I told him. “Send a notification for the early hours. It’s going to be a rough one, let the clients know it’s worth tuning in late for.”
He nodded as he tossed a handful of fries into his mouth.
I didn’t wait until he’d finished chewing.
I was out of the building before he could think to ask me where I was going.
Chapter Nineteen
Paige
I’d tried my sister at least ten times through the afternoon, calling her on repeat between lectures and on the walk back to my dorm. I’d tried her again when I was picking out an evening outfit and again before dashing across the hallway for a second shower of the day. It went straight to voicemail every single time.
It wasn’t that unusual for her to ignore me for days on end. Drugs did that to her. But this was… different. Her owing so much money to dangerous people sent things into a whole new dimension. Every hour that went by without word gave me another hour of panic on top of panic. I was struggling to keep it in check, putting every ounce of my mental weight firmly onto the jack-in-the-box waiting to spring up and send me crazy. But again, that wasn’t unusual.
I’d been fighting to keep panic in check as far back as I could remember.
The evening was heading in at lightning speed around my towering stress levels. I raced through my getting ready efforts with an eye on the clock, making sure I was ready to go with plenty of time to spare. I was dressed up for the donut bar in a figure-hugging knee-length black dress with sensible enough heels on when I opted to try her number once more. This time, for once, it actually rang. I listened with bated breath as the tone bleeped long and slow, ready to unleash a torrent of words as soon as she picked up. But she didn’t.
Voicemail.
Fuck voicemail.
I dialled right back as opposed to leaving yet another message, determined to grab her attention.
But I couldn’t grab her attention. Not how it mattered. The second call in a row sent me straight back through to voicemail. Same old shitty result for my efforts.
Maybe she’d turned it off all over again. Maybe she was too off her tits to want to speak to me. Maybe her own jack-in-the-box had sprung up high and she was hidden under the covers in her bedroom without giving an iota of attention to her phone at all.
Or maybe she didn’t have her phone anymore. Maybe she was lost or stranded or holed up with broken legs in some loan shark’s basement somewhere.
I tossed my handset on the bed and forced myself to take a breath as I smoothed my hair one last time in the mirror, worried sick with my heart in my throat, threatening to spill yet another batch of sad sister tears down my freshly made-up face.
It was becoming more and more obvious I needed to head over there and track her down in person, to hell with the consequences. Hating that nasty part of the city and hating her piece of shit boyfriend meant nothing. I needed to see her. Needed to hug her tight and tell her I was there, that I’d fix things, that I just needed her to hold on and do what she could with two grand in cash until I could come good with the rest.
But I couldn’t go to her place.
Not tonight. Not yet.
There was someone else I needed to see before then. Someone else who was too valuable on the dark road ahead.
I had to hear what Rebecca Lane had to say, and grab hold of every useful snippet of insight she could give me on her sixty days of filth. I’d need it, of that I was sure. Proving myself worthy of that crazy sum of money would take all the useful insight I could get.
I didn’t even glance at my whispering dorm mates on my way down the hall. I stepped out of the front door and kept my head high on my walk through campus, doing my best to keep my breathing steady and my back straight as I passed by a whole host of wide-eyed gossips.
I didn’t care. Couldn’t care. Didn’t have the capacity for any higher stress levels than the ones I was already juggling.
And yet, despite the mountain of pressure brewing, the devil on my shoulder still called my name.
There was an undeniable zing of excitement running underneath the whole sorry lot of it.
I hated myself for it, as always.
I wanted nothing but to feel revulsion, as always.
I wished I was just a regular girl wanting regular missionary sex with some buff guy from college. I wished I was one of a couple of ordinary siblings with ordinary jobs, watching crappy TV on weeknights while the others pinged me about the cliff-hangers on social media.
I wished I had family pets, and old cringy family photographs of me in bad knitted jumpers.
I wished I was a good girl with good happy dreams. That I’d grown up with fairy tales read to me at night before bed, and the door left ajar with a sliver of light to ward off monsters.
Maybe that would have stopped me chasing after big monsters as a big girl and hoping they grabbed me tight and made me suffer. Made me beg. Made me take it all and scream for more.
I knew when I saw Carolyn and her sister waiting at the entrance of the pier that nothing in this world would stop me chasing the monster who’d already made me hurt for him. My nerves fizzed right through me, my throat dry as all hell when Rebecca Lane saw my approach and smiled her beautiful smile.
She was stunning. Totally and utterly.
In that one moment my ugly duckling fears were up and at me.
Her hair was even glossier than I remembered. She was dressed in skinny designer jeans with platform heels, her tits hoisted high and her hips bared to the wind, even in the chill.
There was no way I’d be on a par with her for sixty days. Not even close.
Carolyn was dressed down in comparison, a sweater zipped up to her chin with her fingers in the pockets. Her grin was huge as she saw me, going against the grain from the rest of the populous these past few days and whispering something potentially
nice about me in Rebecca’s ear.
I felt as awkward as shit when I finally reached them, hovering somewhere between a wave and a hug and not knowing where the hell to pitch myself on the friendship front. Carolyn made the decision for me, grabbing me tight and rocking me around like a campus bestie she hadn’t seen in weeks. I returned her enthusiasm with everything I had.
Her perfume was amazing. Floral in a cutesy way that had me smiling bright over her shoulder. I met her sister’s eyes mid-hug and hers were so different from Carolyn’s that my breath stopped dead in my throat.
Rebecca Lane’s eyes were deep and dark and intimidating as sin. They twinkled with a dirty knowing that made the devil on my shoulder burst into song.
She really had experienced an ocean of absolute filth in her sixty days, that much was clear. A dark little shiver of intuition dared to tell me she’d enjoyed it, too.
Carolyn dropped me from the hug and turned to her sister. “Rebecca, this is Paige. Paige, this is Rebecca.”
I held up a hand, hovering awkwardly all over again as the other girl took a step toward me. Her hips swayed like a catwalk model’s, even in that one simple movement. She was confident. Really confident. More confident than I could be in a million years.
“Hi, Rebecca,” I said. “Really pleased to meet you.”
“Same,” she replied. “Carolyn’s told me plenty about you.”
Her tone was thick with knowing.
“Let’s do donuts,” Carolyn prompted. “I can’t wait for you to try them and put the competition to bed. Campus ones are way better, for sure. You’ll agree with me, Paige, I know you will. Rebecca doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”
She took my hand in hers and I was tugged along the pier. She told me about the flavours, so much about the flavours. About icing, and powdered sugar, and how sometimes they come out warm enough to be just so.
She sounded so far away.
But Rebecca’s voice didn’t sound far away at all when she spoke next.
“I don’t think Paige gives two shits about donuts, Carolyn. She cares about surviving sixty days of hardcore filth and coming out minted.”