Sure enough, when I poked at the front door, it creaked open. Dust swam through the air, little bugs illuminated by the bright sunlight—a hypochondriac’s nightmare. I stepped inside.
The same red and green plaid couch slouched in the living room. The same knotty oak table sat in the small dining alcove. The same yellowed refrigerator leaned against the wall in the kitchen, absent of the rattle that indicated it was working.
I walked through the rooms with my hands tightly clasped, the way someone might view the wreckage of some disaster, curious but detached. Neither the furniture nor the years of dust held the answers to my childhood, not any more than the ancient oak trees could explain the wars or the greed of men. I hadn’t come for the inside.
At the screen door, I looked out at the small, unkempt lawn. At that patch of dirt where an eighteen year-old-boy had once stood, making a request for mercy on behalf of a girl who couldn’t speak for herself. That had been over ten years ago, ten years for guilt and frustration and anger to fester. Ten years to silently, privately rage against a monster in plain sight. A man who’d died seven years ago of a heart attack, according to the city records I’d found.
I was grateful that the tire still seemed so big. I crawled inside, not fitting as well as I had before, but still able to squish all my limbs inside. I understood the women who preferred the crushed enclosure of the hold to the freedom and the ocean spray. The world will toss you like the waves, heedless of your pain or your pleasure. Curled into the rubber tire, my whole world narrowed to the distant circle of sky.
No one ever looked for me here. No one ever cared to, except for one man.
I didn’t sleep in that tire. I drifted away to the safe place where nothing could touch me.
Footsteps crunched the brittle weeds and world-worn pebbles, coming closer. I waited with bated breath. My sun was eclipsed by a dark head, shadowed so that I couldn’t see who it was. I knew, though. I just knew.
“Hey, little girl.”
I swallowed against the thickness. “You shouldn’t be out of bed.”
“You shouldn’t be out here alone.”
I allowed him to pull me out of the hole, and we sat side-by-side on the tire. Both of us were bigger physically. Both of us were stronger mentally. I’d read once about how swords were made in ancient times. They folded the metal over, each time melting it and reforming it into a new, stronger blade. That was me, and though he didn’t see it that way, it was Tyler.
He crouched down before me, trailed a soft caress through my hair. “Tell me what you want.” His eyes softened, as if he already knew. But he needed me to say it.
I shook my head, unseeing. If only it were that simple.
“You thought you could sneak out of the hospital and be done with me?” His finger on my chin turned my gaze to his. “You’re mine.”
I braved a laugh. “Just because Carlos said so. Because he gave me to you.”
Tyler regarded me solemnly. “You were always mine. I was just too young and stupid to do anything about it.” He shook his head slowly, regret plain on his face. “I left you.”
“You were right to leave,” I choked out. “I’m a…whore.”
His grip tightened around the back of my neck. “No, Mia. You never were. Never.”
This time my laugh was real and watery.
He shook his head in the face of my disbelief. “I failed you back then. I didn’t know what I had. Didn’t know how to protect you. Never again. I’m here now, and I’m not leaving, unless you want me to.”
He sounded so sure. “What if I don’t want you?”
A hoarse laugh. “I’m not even sure I could leave then. Tell me what you want, Mia.”
You. I wanted things I’d never have. It was cruel of him to tease me this way.
“You’re wrong. I am a whore.” I had no money, nothing but my body to trade for food. I was back to where I’d been ten years ago in every sense of the phrase. Tell me what you want, he’d said. “I want money.”
He shrugged, not bothered at all. “No problem.”
I scrutinized him, trying to figure out what was up. “In exchange for my body.”
An easy nod. “Fine.”
Dammit, I couldn’t read him. What was he playing at? He didn’t really want someone like me, not in his real life. And that was the worst part of it. If he’d really been like Carlos or like Leo, he could have kept me. He would have kept me locked away. Only when I found out that he couldn’t, he wouldn’t ever do that no matter what he said, did I know for sure that was what I wanted.
A normal man, an honorable one, had no business with me.
“Let’s go,” he said. “You didn’t keep Carlos waiting, did you?”
I frowned, almost positive he was teasing. A light flickered in his brown eyes, warming them, but his lips were flat, deadpan. “I’m serious. We have a deal.”
“Are you sure? You haven’t even set a price yet.” He smiled slightly. “I don’t think you’re very good at this.”
I flushed, the bastard. Definitely teasing.
Even worse, he was right. I knew nothing about the business of whoring. I’d made a few deals on the streets before Carlos, mostly for food. I’d met a few who serviced Carlos’s men, but they didn’t stay long enough to get close. And Carlos himself hadn’t played much with other women when I had been there, maybe never. How had I never realized that before, how odd it was for a man like him? Faithfulness.
I had no idea how much a whore should charge. I thought back to that movie, Pretty Woman. Didn’t she charge $700 for the week? That had included room and board. But that was a long time ago. There was inflation to consider. Or did whores not count for inflation? Damn him for making this difficult.
“A thousand dollars a week,” I finally said.
He didn’t laugh but considered it. “So that’s—what? About fifty thousand a year? Done.”
I blinked. Had he just hired me…full time?
He had me by the hand and was pulling me toward the dark car parked out front, then he stopped and cocked his head toward the house. “Was there anything you wanted from here?”
I looked back at it, peeling paint, sagging porch, broken windows and all. “No.”
His hand tightened, and I looked over. “I own it.”
I sucked in a breath. “Why?”
He shrugged, looking vaguely guilty. “When your dad died, it went up for auction. You were long gone by then, but I guess I thought you might come back someday…or maybe I just didn’t want anyone else to live there.”
His words flooded me with warmth. It was a fucked-up bond we shared, twisted and gnarled like the arteries gripping a heart, but it was real. He knew me.
“I don’t want anyone else to live there either. I want—” It was still hard to do this, to say what I wanted. I swallowed years of training. “I want it to be torn down.”
His eyes shone with something I could have sworn was pride. “Consider it done.”
“Thank you.” The emotions spilled over, threatening to drown out the sense of peace that had embraced me ever since I’d walked out of the hospital a free woman.
Maybe he knew how much this meant to me, how close I was to the edge, because he added, “But I’m taking it out of your wages.”
A smile tugged at my lips, but I hid it with my hand. He really was a bastard.
He took me by surprise, pulling my hand away and pressing a kiss to my lips. Just as quickly, he straightened. His eyes smiled, even if he didn’t.
“Come on,” he said. “We have a busy day.”
Then he proceeded to make good on his threat by taking me to store after store. I’d never shopped much at all, not with my dad, certainly. And Carlos had usually bought my clothes for me, ordering what he wanted me to wear. Dressing me like a doll. Tyler was the same way, insisting I buy clothes and lots of them. Except I had to pick out everything. I wanted freedom, but this overwhelmed me. Just when I was sure I’d had enough, Tyler took me to his ho
use.
A little cottage-style home beamed at me from its small lot. I didn’t belong here.
I flashed guilty glances at the rows of oak trees as we went up the sidewalk. I knew Tyler noticed, but thankfully, he didn’t comment.
He ordered pizza, saying he only cooked mac and cheese and I was too worn out to do it. Then he turned on a movie, some romantic comedy rental that I stared at in utter shock and awe. The whole evening left me dazed, like I’d stepped into a fantasy land. Almost like I was a regular person.
I took a long shower. Well, not that long. I’d found one thing I missed from my life with Carlos—God, had it only been a week ago that I’d lived in his compound?—the endless supply of hot water. Even the hospital, where I’d had to stay the past week, had a good supply. In this small house, with only a bachelor to break it in, the water heater tapped out in ten minutes.
It was comforting to find something wrong with this picture, as if it might not be a dream after all. When I came out of the bathroom, Tyler was leaning in the corner, watching me.
I wanted things back on solid ground, so I dropped my towel. I heard his quick inhale, but he didn’t move. He’d watched before at Carlos’s place, so I went to the dresser and brushed out my hair.
I knew he was trying to do some kind of savior shit with all this. Like maybe I’d go to sleep a whore and wake up tomorrow a normal woman. The mirror reflected my naked body, with pink scars and yellowish bruises blooming across my skin. I looked like an unfinished art project, painted with fists. The abuse was etched into my skin, branding me forever as a whore. It was better that he see this, that he not forget.
When I’d pulled the brush through the wet strands enough times, I put down the brush, watching the man approach me through the mirror. His eyes were on mine, but of course he could see me in all my lack of glory. That probably explained the lust in his eyes. If he’d thought I was that little girl back at the house, I’d reminded him what I was now.
He didn’t disappoint. With his hands on my hips and his mouth on my neck, he pulled me flush against him. And just to dispel any doubt, a hard bulge pressed into my lower back. I closed my eyes and let my head fall back, knowing his body would be there to catch me.
“I thought you might hold off,” I murmured.
His breath blew hot against my skin, damp from his tongue. “Hold off why?”
“You know.” I wiggled my backside against his erection, earning a groan for my trouble. “Trying to be honorable or something.”
He nipped my earlobe. “I’m not honorable.”
My eyes opened and met his in the mirror. “I think you are.”
His brown eyes flashed, light reflecting his denial. “Like you think you’re a whore?”
“You’re going to pay me, aren’t you? And you’re going to fuck me, won’t you?”
His cock prodded me intimately. “I’ll give you my money.” He plunged inside, I gasped. “I’ll give you everything I have.” And again, deeper. “Everything I am.” His lips touched my ear as he whispered, “And yes, I’m going to fuck you. All the time.”
Then he was pulling out and thrusting back inside, filling me and turning me inside out. I held onto the dresser, fingers gripping tight like at the edge of a cliff, but it was too late, I was already falling. I’d fallen for him years ago.
He straightened his body, angling his cock higher on every thrust. Pleasure built, spiraling higher. The dresser melted away and my shame faded to nothing. There were only his labored breaths against my nape and his cock inside me. I crashed into my orgasm with violent shudders and an ache where my cold heart used to be.
He deepened his thrusts, working my body for his own release. I watched his face in the mirror, fierce with intention and slack with arousal. I knew when he came, not just from the fingers tight on my hips, grinding me down, or the hot pulse inside me, but from the glimpse of ecstasy on his face.
We stumbled together to the bed, collapsing in a sated heap of cotton sheets and cooling sweat. My eyes were closed, but I could feel him, unmoving. His hand found mine, and I latched onto him.
“There’s a different name for that, Mia. When a man gives a woman everything he has. When a man fucks a woman. All the time.”
My breath caught. “Marriage?”
“You’re a greedy little one,” he said on a laugh. “I was going to say love.”
I jabbed him in the side. “And you’re a sap.”
He pushed up onto his elbow. “So marry me.”
I hid my wide smile in his chest, trying to contain the elation that threatened to burst me into tears.
“Don’t tease me,” he warned. “Tell me your answer.”
I did him one better. I showed him.
Epilogue
I knew what hunger felt like, claw marks in my belly. I knew what pain and fear felt like. My body still had the marks. Happiness felt foreign. Peace, even more so.
Dappled sunlight on my face.
Green grass spongy between my toes.
A warm hand holding mine.
There was a sense of timelessness, as if I could sit here forever. As if I already had. The porch wasn’t broke down and grim. It was freshly painted white with honeysuckle just starting to twine around the railing. And instead of a tire swing, there was a hammock—woven fabric with colorful stripes.
I’d fallen asleep in that hammock, cradled in the arms of my lover. I’d woken up confused, disoriented, and toppled us both out of the net. I still remember Tyler’s laugh, the timbre of it, the vibration it made through my body, like a mark that can’t be seen.
“Mia?” he asked softly.
He did that a lot—called me back. I look at our hands linked together. “I’m okay.”
He squeezed my fingers gently. “You don’t have to pretend for me.”
Sometimes I just didn’t know if it was possible. How could the marks of hunger and pain fade away? It had been years since I’d been on the streets, years that I’d been in Carlos’s care, and they were as fresh as ever.
“I can’t…” My throat tightened, and I had to stop. Tyler waited until I could speak again. “I can’t forget.”
From inside the house, his cellphone rang.
He swore softly. “Ignore it.”
“No.” I begged him with my eyes. “Answer it.”
After another couple rings, he cursed again and went to answer it.
For the first month, he had refused to leave my side. He’d made a cocoon for us here, a safe place for us to rest. And I needed to know that we could emerge anew and spread our wings. He may not admit it, but he needed to be back out there working for the FBI as much as they needed him.
I blinked as a small light flashed from the tree line where the yard turned into woods. My heart beat a little faster. Sometimes it felt like I was being watched. Like I was being watched over.
Carlos. My own perverted guardian angel.
The FBI would never find him, that much I was sure of. Hesitantly, I waved at the trees, and whoever might be behind them. Then felt incredibly silly. For one thing Tyler had set up excellent security around the property. Although if anyone could get past it, it was Carlos.
But Carlos had let me go. I meant nothing to him. No, that wasn’t quite true. We’d had something, even if it wasn’t love.
Even if it wasn’t forever.
The porch wood creaked behind me. Tyler stepped up and pressed a kiss to my forehead before he sat.
“Your supervisor?” I asked.
“Not yet, he isn’t,” he muttered. “Doesn’t stop him from giving orders.”
I smiled a little. Oh, he wanted to go back. “You didn’t tell him yes?”
“When I’m ready.”
“When I’m ready, you mean.” He’d stay here forever if I let him. “I told you I’m fine.”
“Mia,” he said in warning.
“It’s because of my nightmares,” I whispered, resigned. I couldn’t hide them from him. He’d woken me up, my throa
t hoarse from screaming.
He shook his head. “Not only yours, Mia. I have nightmares too,” he said, his voice hushed like he was giving a confession. Like the shaded backyard was a church. Like he needed to repent. “I have nightmares where we’re back there, and I don’t know how to protect you. Or worse—where you’re gone, and I can’t find you.”
It shook me, that he’d admit that. He was a strong man. Physically. Emotionally. He didn’t have any weakness that I could see, but he was afraid…for me. I reached for him then, using my hands to soothe him. I would have used my mouth too, but I was learning to give comfort without sex.
I rested my forehead against his shoulder.
“That’s why I keep you close,” he said. “Maybe too close. I don’t want you to feel like you’re trapped here.”
The porch swing creaked softly in the wind. A dog barked in the distance, probably the beagle who lived two doors down. It should have been sweet and soft. In my dreams, in my wildest wishes, that was how it had been, muted with clouds and lace.
This wasn’t soft.
It was hard—an ache in my breastbone and rough wood against my thighs. It was the haunted look in Tyler’s eyes, a pain I could never quite soothe with my body.
“Trap me,” I said, looking straight at him, facing the pain head-on. “Forever.”
The darkness eased, just slightly. Pleasure flickered in those dark eyes, so familiar and yet so far away. I saw the promise in his eyes, the carnality, and prepared myself to get on my knees, right there on the porch steps in front of him.
Please don’t take me up to the bedroom. I wanted to be used, not wrapped in muslin and put away.
“Lay back.” His voice had gone hard.
I leaned back on my elbows first, feeling the cotton of my dress catch on the wood. The thin fabric provided little cushion as I draped myself over the top step.
He was the one who knelt at the bottom, in front of me. He smoothed my dress up my legs and rested one hand inside my thigh. His gaze met mine. “I love you, Mia. You’re mine. Always.”
Tears filled my eyes and slid down the side of my face. “Tyler.”