BABY FOR A PRICE: Marino Crime Family

by Kathryn Thomas

  He grins down at me. “You’ve got to know,” he says, “that you can’t come at me with a body as tight as that, with a face as sexy as yours, and expect me to back off. So you need to answer a question. Do you really want this?”

  I look inside myself, wondering. I’ve never been sure if I really wanted anything, I realize. Maybe when I was young and Mom was still alive, but the day the cancer attacked her, I stopped wanting and just started doing. It wasn’t a question of want. I couldn’t even let it factor into my decisions because it would upset me too much. What teenager wants to drop out of school and work like a dog? What woman wants to work at The Lady Shack and smile at asshole guys? And yet, as I lean even closer to this mysterious, giant of a man, I find that I do want it. At least, I think I do.

  “I…I don’t know how to tell,” I answer, honestly. Too honestly. I’m supposed to be playing the sexy seducer, not giving him a glimpse into my heart. “I mean—yeah, baby. I want it, bad.”

  “No,” he says. “No, I don’t want that. I can pay for that. I want you.”

  “You want me to want it? Why do you care?”

  His lips twitch again, and then he reaches forward and slides his hand up my dress, to my panties, and presses his middle and ring fingers against my pussy. He presses hard, pushing against my clit, watching my face carefully.

  The pleasure hits me like a speeding truck, taking my unawares. I didn’t realize how wet my pussy was until now, with the wetness filling my panties. The tingles multiply, becoming more intense, becoming so intense a moan escapes my lips.

  “Because when you come all over my dick, I want it to be real. I want to hear you moan, and know it’s real.”

  I twist my lips here and there, letting the fakeness seep out of me like water from a burst balloon. “It feels good,” I whisper. “It does. It really does.”

  Maybe I am doing this for my family, but that doesn’t mean I can’t do it for me at the same time. Maybe it’s time I started thinking about me every once in a while anyway. But even as I sink into the pleasure, a little nervous voice echoes around my head: “What are you doing? Is this right? What are you doing? Is this right?”

  Chapter Four

  Hound

  I want to be a better man, goddamn it, I do, but when you’ve got a woman as fine as this twitching in the palm of your hand, it’s difficult. I think of the image I’ve had of myself these past few months, of a learning man who respects people around him and all that shit, and I can’t remember why that was appealing. Her pussy is warm, moist against my fingertips, her moans low and real. Even if the alleyway is stinking and disgusting, she makes it better just by being here, hot to the touch, nipples pushing so hard against her bra I can see it through her Lady Shack tank top.

  “Are you going to come?” I ask her, looking down into her eyes, which flit open and closed as she rides my fingers. All around the alleyway, I can hear cars honking and people shouting and tires screeching, but that just makes it all the more dangerous. The man I was striving to be would take his hand away and ask her to go back to a hotel room at least, but I can’t, not now. I’m too hard for that. Rock-fucking-hard. Pressing against my jeans like I’m going to explode. All thoughts of literature and learning and houses drift away. I’m left with nothing but my cock and this cute, big-assed, big-titted moaning woman. “Are you going to come all over my fucking fingers?”

  She bites her lip when she nods, looking nervous. Women must know how much it drives us crazy when they do that, biting their lip, like they’re scared of their pleasure but can’t help but want it at the same time. I push her underwear aside, feeling her lips, which are swollen and wet. Pushing down from her clit, I go toward her hole, my fingers getting wetter the closer I get.

  “Tell me you want me to fuck you,” I say, as I slide my middle finger deep inside of her. Fuck, but she’s tight, one of those pussies which grips like a hand and only loosens after some teasing. I push deeper and deeper, loving how wet and warm she is.

  “I do want you to fuck me,” she says quietly. She sounds surprised. Surprised at herself, maybe. “I really do.”

  I push another finger inside of her, opening her even more. I really mean to rub her and tease her until she comes, but my cock is getting so hard now my balls are beginning to ache. The man I was trying to be would dutifully get her off before taking what he wanted, but that man is a dim shadow far back in my mind. So I grab her wrist with my free hand and guide her to the front of my jeans. She bites her lip again, looking unsure, but when her fingers press against my cock, she lets out another moaning noise. “Oh,” she says, rubbing up and down as I finger her. “You’re big. You’re really big.”

  “And you’re tight and sexy,” I tell her. “You’re…fuck this.”

  I can’t help myself anymore. Maybe I’m letting the animal out. Maybe the animal which was Hound for a large part of my life, ever since I started the game when I was a teenager, isn’t so easily ignored. I remove my hand from her and start tearing at her clothes. She lets out a squeal, but after a second she’s doing the same to my clothes, unbuckling my belt and tugging at my jeans. I yank her Lady Shack top over her head, revealing her bra, and then I’ve unclipped her bra with one hand and her breasts are spilling free. Jesus fucking Christ, if there were ever tits as round and plump and bouncy as these, I haven’t seen them. They’re somehow pointy and round at the same time, and the nipples are large and dark. I lean forward, grabbing one in my hand and sucking the nipples of the other. Her nipples are already hard, but they go harder as I suck and rub.

  “That feels—oh—that feels…” She pulls my jeans and briefs down around my knees. My cock springs up. She’s so much shorter than me that it almost brushes her tits, just from standing here like this. She reaches down and grabs it, sliding pre-come from the tip all the way down to the balls and back again, jerking it fast.

  “I need to fucking be inside of you,” I say, leaning up. “I need to feel that tight fucking pussy.”

  She stares up at me, biting her lip in that way that’s driving me mad, wringing her hands. She looks unsure, but at the same time her chest rises and falls quickly, making her breasts jostle, and one of her hands creeps between her legs, toying with her clit. Unsure, but she wants it, she wants it as badly as I do. She looks around the alleyway, wincing, but when she turns back to me the alleyway seems to disappear. “I want it to,” she says. “I really do. Wow, I really, really do.” Her eyes go wide as she steps forward, pressing her breasts against my chest, squashing them. “Will you fuck me hard?” She shivers as she says it.

  “Does it scare you, thinking about how hard I could fuck you?”

  She nods. “But it excites me, too. Most other men are—well, they’re not men at all, really.”

  I trail my hand up her back, lightly gripping her neck. “I can fuck you harder than you’ve ever been fucked,” I tell her. “But only if you’re ready to take it. Because I won’t be able to stop. Not with a pussy like yours. A pussy as perfect as yours.”

  I love the way she swallows, the way she looks scared, unsure, and yet horny all at once. “Fuck me,” she says.

  Her tights are around her knees, her skirt hiked up around her waist, revealing a perfect place of pleasure: two tight ass cheeks, round and large and bouncy, framing a wet pussy, the lips engorged. I guide her to the wall and push her forward, bending her over, so that she grips the concrete with her fingernails. I spit in my hand and stroke my cock up and down.

  Then I grab her ass cheeks, watching the flesh turn red under my hard grip, and guide my cock to her hole. I’m bigger, way bigger than her hole, so when I first push in she starts moaning and twisting like she wants to get away, but then I push in deeper and I feel a rush of warmth over my dick as she opens up for me. Then she stops twisting and pushes back instead, sliding down the length of me. Hard, she said, and so that’s what I do. I fuck her the hardest I’ve ever fucked anybody. I fuck her so hard I lose all control of myself. I dig my fingers i
nto her flesh and slide in and out, pounding her, my balls swinging against her clit, my cock burying as deep as it can over and over. My eyes are blurry and I’m only vaguely aware of her moaning, or my own grunts. All I know is that hot place between her legs, that hot place which makes my cock throb with heat each time I thrust into it. She squirts onto my cock, once, twice, big thick white liquid that slides up my cock and into her asshole. And that sight drives me even crazier, her squirting like that for me, and now it’s all over her round bouncy ass. I rub the come all over her, and then fuck her harder so that she’ll give me more.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I groan, unable to hold it any longer, drilling so fast she almost slams into the wall a few times. She has to hold herself up. The man I was trying to be would stop and hold her tenderly so she didn’t get hurt. But me, Hound, the man I am in this moment, it’s all I can do not to throw her to the floor and drill her into the concrete. My balls start aching, the tip of my cock buzzing like crazy, and then I’m coming right into her pussy, exploding inside of her, emptying into her. “Fuck!” I roar. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

  I keep fucking her long after I’ve come, right up until my cock is too soft to go in anymore, and then I step away, almost tripping over my jeans.

  We both dress silently, and then we’re standing opposite each other, her cheeks flushed and her hair messy. I don’t know what to say at first. It’s always a weird experience for a man, those moments after you come, when you go from wild animal to a person again.

  “Meet me after your shift,” I say on impulse. “There’s a strip joint near here. Down the street, the third left. Meet me there.”

  “Why?” she says, an odd look on her face. It takes me a second to realize what it is: the look a woman gets after she’s come a few times, that sleepy, content look. “What for?”

  I lean close to her, smelling that sweet after-sex scent, sweat and come and lust. “Because I’m not done with you yet. Not even close.”

  Chapter Five

  Daisy

  I tell Marsha that I thought I was on my lunchbreak. I don’t think she believes me, but I agree to work an extra forty-five minutes to make up for it and that settles the matter. So for the rest of the afternoon and into the evening, I work with Hound’s body pressed against mine, the memory of it so real at times that I’m sure I’ll turn around and find him standing over me again. He fucked me, really fucked me, fucked me harder than any man has even gotten close to. Hell, he fucked me even harder than I thought I could take. There were times when I was bent over against that wall when I thought I’d just snap in half, and yet there were times when I couldn’t believe I’d ever had sex in any other way. And now he wants me to go to a strip club, because he isn’t done with me. What does that mean? I’m not so naïve to think that one back-alley tumble will get rid of all Dad’s debts, so I think I ought to go to see what he has to say.

  And even when I leave the Shack in my sweatpants and hoodie, glad to be out of the body-crushing clothes, I know that I’m lying to myself. Or half-lying, at least. I am going to the strip club to see about Dad, but I’m also going because this Hound guy intrigues me, intrigues me a lot. It’s like some scientist put all the men who usually hit on me into a machine with the intention of producing someone as close to opposite as possible…but who still wants to hit on me. I’ve been hit on so many times, I didn’t think a man like that existed.

  Yet, as I make my way down the street, the world finally cooling, I can’t pinpoint exactly what is so different about Hound. He’s just as sex-hungry, body-objectifying, horny and crazed as the rest of them. So what exactly is this difference? Is it just that I feel less fake around him, less like a mannequin there to please him, and more like a real, actual woman? Or maybe that’s just some highbrow bullshit and really I just like how big his dick is and how huge his muscles are, and I’m just justifying.

  The strip club is a squat, brick building with huge neon red letters which read The Red Room. I’ve never been in a strip club, but this is not at all what I expect. The few times I have imagined what strip clubs are like, I always get an image from an old episode of some reality show I watched a few years back, when a group of housewives went to the strip club because it would be kooky. As I approach The Red Room, with its chewing gum stuck to the door and smell of stale beer and cigarettes, the looming, flat-faced bouncer watching me with stony eyes, I’m sure the reality wives went to a staged set; their strip club was like a spaceship from a sci-fi flick, all clean flat surfaces with super-hot women who all absolutely adored their job.

  When I get inside, I’m met with a sticky floor, a room packed full of old, young, fat, skinny, and leering men. Red lights shine all over, giving the place its name. I look around for Hound and spot him in the corner, leaning on the bar. There’s a woman working the pole, climbing up it and sliding down, her legs wrapped around the metal and her breasts bouncing freely. Hound isn’t watching her. He’s looking down at his phone, maybe at the time.

  As I make my way toward him somebody touches my arm. I turn, startled, in no mood for some creep to be grabbing me. Even as I think this, I reflect: And yet I was okay with Hound fucking me in an alleyway, Hound, a stranger, a man I met less than twelve hours ago. I turn on the man, ready to shout at him, but then I see a smiling face I recognize. His name is Jack Michaels—which the Shack girls joke is about the most boring, mundane name that’s ever existed—and he’s a regular at the Shack. He’s wearing a flashy suit, as he always is, with an old-timey handkerchief stuck in the front, and an old-timey bow-tie, and an old-timey receding hairline and several old-timey nose hairs.

  “Daisy?” he says, his old-timey eyebrows rising in shock. “What are you doing here?”

  “Meeting a friend,” I respond. The crowd surges around me and I don’t really have a choice but to follow him to the edge. When we’re no longer being pushed from all directions, I say, “I shouldn’t keep them waiting.”

  “Oh, sure, sure.” He smooths a hand over his sparse grey hair. He’s like Dad from an alternate universe, Dad if he had grown stocky and strong in old age instead of skinny and weak. “It’s just…well, don’t let anybody tell you that I don’t mind my manners, Daisy, I’m a man made of manners. Well—” He smooths his head again. “I was just wondering—this is out there, you know, way out there—well, look, let me put it like this. You see her?” He points to the woman writhing on the pole.

  “I see her.”

  “She makes three-hundred a night, sometimes more.”

  “Okay…”

  He squints at me, maybe wanting me to click onto what he’s saying without having to be told. I think I know what he’s driving at, but I’m not about to risk it by just offering it up. If I’m wrong that’d be incredibly embarrassing.

  “What if you auditioned sometime?” he finally says.

  I let out a laugh. A gruff, sort of manly laugh, the kind of laugh I usually reserve for random barks of hilarity when watching my favorite sitcoms. An image enters my mind: Daisy Dunham, stripped bare of her Shack uniform, writhing on stage. But even as I laugh, the financial, survival part of my mind, the part of my mind which ticks overtime and never stops, even when I’m asleep, starts to consider it. What if I did audition? I could dance a few nights a week instead of waitressing and make twice as much money.

  “You don’t have to answer right now,” Jack assures me. “Here. Let me give you this.”

  He hands me his card. I take it. Then I’m moving through the crowd once again, toward Hound. He smiles when he sees me, but not the cheesy grin he offered me in the Shack earlier today. This is a genuine smile, which lights up his face, turning him from a resting, dangerous fighter to a friend in half a heartbeat. It’s amazing what a smile can do to a face.

  “Hello, pretty lady,” he says. “I hired us a booth.”

  The booth is lit with red lava lamps, dotted on a low table and lined along the wall, and the couch is bright red leather. “I had one of those when I was a kid,” I
say, nodding at a lava lamp. Talking, I suppose, so I don’t have to contemplate what I’m doing. “It was before Mom died, but after she got cancer. A friend gave me one for my birthday but one day Mom rushed to the bathroom and knocked into it—I put it in the living room after asking them—and it shattered all over the floor. I didn’t even care that it broke. All I cared about was that Mom was crying and trying to put the pieces of glass back together with vomit still clinging to her night blouse.” I abruptly stop, face going red. I don’t usually let my words get away from me like that. Before Hound can reply, I blurt, “So, why am I here?”

  We sit side by side. Hound presses a button on the wall and a bikini-clad black lady holding an empty silver tray pokes her red through the red falling curtains. Hound orders a beer and I order a lemonade. “Not much of a drinker?” he asks.

  “Not when I’m sitting in a stripper’s booth with a stranger,” I reply.

  He laughs. “Fair enough.”

  We sit sipping our drinks for a while and then I repeat my question: “Why am I here, Hound? I thought I paid my dad’s debts off earlier today.” I don’t believe this, but it’s worth a try.