Murderous Profession

by D J Small

  She nodded. “Yes, we need to know what happened and everything she said to you.”

  Dax nodded back. “Right.”

  He turned to walk away, and Eliza balled her hands up. The dejection tainting Dax’s voice had not been lost on her, but she didn’t know what to say to him to soothe it. At least not yet. Her emotions and thoughts were a complete mess, and she didn’t want to say anything that would hurt him.

  “Dax,” Eliza called out.

  He turned around.

  “When you finish, come find me.”

  Dax smiled a little. “Sure thing, Detective Legs.”

  Eliza rolled her eyes, but then she walked over to him and gave his cheek a kiss.

  Dax chuckled. “I think I’m going to get whiplash because of you.”

  Eliza grinned and countered, “That is the least of your problems.”

  “I’m sure it is,” Dax said with a chuckle.

  Before the two of them could continue, Billy called for Eliza, and she sighed. “I have to go.”

  Dax nodded. “I’ll come find you later.”

  Eliza watched him turn around and walk over to the officers that were waiting to take him to the station so he could give his statement. Once they had exited the warehouse, Eliza blew out a long breath and shook her head. Work needed to be done before she could think about her and Dax any further.

  Pushing him from her thoughts, Eliza walked over to Billy, and they began to wrap up the case.

  Epilogue

  Dax was a dead man. Staring at the forest-green dress that had been delivered to her apartment earlier that afternoon, Eliza contemplated the number of ways she planned to kill him. When she couldn’t come up with any new ideas, she expanded on the original ones, making them more lethal than their prior versions. The dress was a gift from Dax for their first official date.

  Eliza sighed and walked over to her bedside table and picked up the glass of water that was sitting on it. After taking a long drink from it, she turned around and stared at the dress hanging on the back of her closet door again, pressing the edge of the glass to her lips.

  This was her fault. Because he had wanted their first date to be a surprise, Eliza had told him yesterday that if she didn’t know where he was taking her, she wouldn’t know what to wear. This had prompted Dax to ask if he could buy her an outfit. At first, Eliza had been a little wary, but after laying down some strict rules and guidelines, she had felt somewhat better about the idea of him buying her clothes. After all, Dax was a walking fashion ad.

  As she continued to eye the dress, she knew some of her guidelines had been pushed to the limit.

  The hem of the dress would probably come to a stop an inch or two above mid-thigh, and the satin material would hug her every one of her curves—she had quite a few of them, since she wasn’t some thin model—but the fit of the dress hadn’t been a guideline.

  The neckline, on the other hand, had, and though it wasn’t plunging, the apex of the V was low enough to tease at a hint of cleavage in the middle of it. The thin spaghetti straps were in complete violation of her guidelines, and so was the exposed back. The thin straps were attached to the two pieces of fabric that would cover her breasts, looping over her shoulders then crisscrossing at the back before coming to a stop above the sheath-bottomed hem of the dress.

  It was a simple and elegant dress, beautiful by all accounts, and it had probably cost more than she took home in a month.

  Eliza sighed, placed the glass of water back on the nightstand, and walked out of her room, heading for the living room. It wasn’t the dress that had her out of sorts, she was nervous about the impending date. It would be their first official one. What they had been doing the last month-and-a-half didn’t compare to this.

  Still wearing her fuzzy blue robe, Eliza plopped down on her couch, then laid back, covering her eyes with one arm while the other dangled over the side. For the last six weeks, they had been taking it slow. Excruciatingly slow. The unhurried pace had come as a suggestion from Dax’s therapist when he had told her about their situation.

  The licensing board had ordered him to take six months of therapy after everything that had happened with Veronica. If he didn’t, Dax would lose his license. Eliza had been angry when Dax had told her his therapist had suggested they take things slowly. Him speaking to another person about their situation triggered one of the insecurities she had about relationships in general, but when he explained why, she had reluctantly agreed.

  A major reason why his therapist had told him to go slow with her was because of Eliza’s issues with Dax’s job. It was a significant stumbling block for them, and they needed to learn how to navigate it. One day, after a session with his therapist, Dax had shared with Eliza that he had told her about Eliza’s issues with his work, and how she had advised him to be honest and not hide what he did from Eliza.

  Though she had been initially upset with Dax for discussing her issues with someone whose job it was to analyze people, Eliza had eventually grown to appreciate it. It meant he was serious about them and willing to be open with her about his work in order to help them through her issues. The situation had left Eliza floundering; she had never been in a relationship where someone was willing to communicate so freely with her. The whole thing still scared her, but she had agreed, and they had set up guidelines.

  Before Dax either met with a client or planned to meet with one he would let her know, and they would discuss her feelings about it. In the beginning, she had found the conversations ridiculous, but had done her best to take them in stride. However, she had quickly realized that she wouldn’t be able to accept what Dax did for a living. It was something her mind could not wrap around.

  After one of their pre-client discussions, Eliza had figured out what her issue was. No matter how many times they had talked about his work, she hadn’t been able to understand why someone would choose to be a sex worker. To her, the profession was degrading and offensive.

  When she had eventually told Dax this, it had resulted in him telling her to go to therapy. Of course, Eliza had laughed in his face and told him to shove that particular suggestion up his ass. Dax had ended the argument by telling her that he couldn’t be in a relationship with someone that didn’t respect the work he did.

  Eliza moved her arm, grimacing as she stared at the ceiling. Her response to the statement hadn’t been a shining moment in their budding relationship.

  ◊◊◊

  Dax had stood in the middle of his living room, calm as could be, with his hands in the pockets of his jeans. Eliza had felt her nostrils flare as anger ripped through her.

  “So because I refuse to go to therapy, I’m not respecting the work you do?” An incredulous, unrestrained laugh had come from Eliza. “You have sex with other people for money, Dax. How can I respect that?”

  Stunned, Dax had blinked several times, then said, “Huh. I think I may have perceived you all wrong, Detective.”

  Eliza had shaken her head. “No, you don’t get to play the ‘close-minded’ card here. I am asking you how can you expect me to respect you for sleeping with other people for money? There are health risks I have to worry about, the possibility of you being hurt, and so much more. It isn’t as clear-cut as you make it out to be.”

  “Okay, but because you didn’t specify those things, it didn’t come out as you being concerned about them,” Dax had stated pointedly. “You said it in way that sounded like you were looking down on me for having sex for money.”

  Eliza had examined what she had said in her mind, and the more she did, the more her tone damned her. She did look down on him for having sex with other people for money; all the different ways he had tried to explain it to her didn’t change that.

  “Shit,” she had whispered. She had sighed and looked at him. “What do we do?”

  Dax had let out a sigh that echoed hers and moved closer to her. “I told you what you need to do; you need to find out why you think that way.”

  The
bitter pill had been a hard one to swallow, but Eliza had nodded. “Where does this leave us?”

  Dax had given her a slight shrug and a brief smile. “Taking it slow.”

  ◊◊◊

  After that, “taking it slow” had become their mantra. Because of it, they didn’t kiss, they didn’t cuddle on the couch, and they didn’t even maintain eye contact for too long because of this stupid rule. Taking it slow was the worst concept Eliza had ever come across in her thirty-two years of life, but at the same time, she was grateful for it. Things between her and Dax would have gone differently without it, and she believed they wouldn’t be where they were now. Her beliefs and insecurities would have caused her to break things off.

  Two weeks after that argument, Eliza had begun therapy; and man, was her therapist an asshole. The woman had blatantly told her that she was being ridiculous, and that sex was a basic instinct. She told Eliza that it didn’t matter if people paid consenting individuals to fulfill it, and that the arrangement was between them and no one else.

  Eliza had argued that such a situation seemed degrading, and that was when the dreaded “Why?” had instantly been thrown back at her, which she hadn’t had an answer for.

  Joan, her therapist, had asked if she was afraid of losing Dax to one of his clients, and her immediate response had been surprising even to herself. Eliza had admitted she was afraid of losing him to a client, but that didn’t feed into why she thought the profession was degrading.

  Then Joan had proceeded to ask if she specifically believed that Dax was degrading himself to do his work. Eliza had laughed at the question. To her, it had been an absurd one. She had explained to Joan that she didn’t believe Dax was degrading himself by being a sex worker. He was proud of his work and loved what it gave his clients.

  It was at this point in their conversation that Joan had pointed out that perhaps she needed to start seeing the positive in Dax’s work instead of the negative, explaining that she believed Eliza’s line of thinking was probably a result of society’s negative response to sex work.

  At the end of the session, Joan had given Eliza her first assignment; to ask Dax about his day and his clients and have a conversation about them for at least fifteen minutes.

  Joan had added a caveat to the assignment a session later, and challenged her to ask Dax explicitly about the appointments with his clients. Eliza had thought she had already been asking Dax about his clients and their appointments, but boy, was she wrong.

  At first the assignment had been difficult. She didn’t know how to pose the question, and Dax didn’t know how to answer it.

  On their second attempt, Eliza had gotten fed up with them being uncertain around each other and had ended up explaining her assignment to Dax so he could understand what she was trying to do and figure out how to answer her question. After that, she had almost regretted following through with the assignment. Almost.

  Jealousy had made her walk away from the first conversation they had after Eliza explained everything to him. Sure, his clients got a fabricated experience with him, but that didn’t matter to her. They were getting to experience everything Eliza wanted to share with him. She wanted to be on the receiving end of his tender touches and soft caresses, she wanted to be the one that heard whispered praises of her body. To Eliza, it wasn’t fair that they got a part of Dax that she couldn’t have because of the many obstacles that were in front of them.

  For an entire week after that initial conversation, Eliza didn’t ask Dax about work, then one night, he had ambushed her. He had just started talking, and at first, Eliza had wanted to leave, but Dax had followed her around, continuing his story and pretending like he wasn’t chasing her through his apartment.

  When he had mentioned a turning point that occurred during the appointment, Eliza had stopped and actually paid attention to him. There had been a reverence in his tone that caused her to focus on him. It had taken several conversations, but soon she became more observant of Dax when he spoke about the sessions with his clients.

  When he spoke about the appointments where he got a client to push their body to limits it had never been before, or how they dropped their inhibitions under his touch, Dax spoke with such amazement, as if he couldn’t believe he had the ability to provoke that kind of a reaction from a person.

  Those appointments were the ones that seemed to mean the most to him. The one-and-done ones were just that, simple business transactions and nothing more, but the appointments where he got to see a person’s soul and watch them lose themselves to their passion put a gleam in his eye. A sort of happiness that Eliza only saw when he was around her.

  Thanks to Joan and her stupid assignment, Eliza had begun to change her perspective on Dax’s job.

  The buzz of her apartment’s intercom drew Eliza from her thoughts. She lifted her head and looked at the clock hanging above her TV. It was four o’clock in the afternoon; Dax wasn’t supposed to come get her until six. Eliza frowned, hoping that he hadn’t shown up early. She got off the couch and went over to the entryway, then pressed the intercom button and said, “Yeah?”

  “Hi, I’m Melanie Ruiz. Dax Collins told me to come by and help you get ready for tonight,” a perky voice said through the speaker.

  Eliza scowled. Dax was a super dead man. She pressed the button. “A moment, please.”

  She walked to her room and retrieved her cell phone off the nightstand, calling Dax immediately.

  The line rang twice before he answered. “Melanie?”

  “Melanie,” Eliza repeated in a clipped tone.

  “Ah. I see you’re not happy about me sending her over, but you should consider letting her help you,” Dax said. His conciliatory tone did nothing to help her annoyance.

  Eliza scowled. “I don’t need help, Dax. I’ll put on the stupid expensive dress along with the stupid expensive shoes, and that’s that.”

  A long silence followed her small explosion, then a sigh filled her ear, and right away, Eliza knew that she had stepped into something. “Okay. You can do whatever you want, Eliza, but remember this is our first date. Our first legitimate date. I’m sorry if I wanted it to be special for the both of us.”

  Eliza drew in a deep breath through her nose. She wasn’t really that annoyed with him, but the pampering and the expensive clothing did make her uncomfortable, and she didn’t take being uncomfortable well. She released the breath.

  “I’m not used to this, Dax,” she admitted softly.

  “I know,” Dax said.

  Eliza frowned when she heard the smile in his voice.

  “This is a one-time thing, Detective. After this, we can go back to going to your place and eating pizza. You can even wear your blood-stained boots.”

  “I do not have blood-stained boots!” Eliza exclaimed. “I cleaned them.”

  On one of her visits to Dax’s apartment, she had just come from a crime scene, and there had been a splotch of blood on one of her boots. Dax had had the cutest meltdown about it, refusing to let her into his apartment with her boots on. Eliza had been ordered to take them off in the foyer, then put them out in the hallway. His reaction to a spot of blood beat out Billy’s response to dead bodies.

  “Oh, and you’re just high-maintenance,” Eliza added.

  “Ah,” Dax said, “but you knew that to begin with.” He chuckled. “Can you please let me treat you like a lady tonight, and once a month going forward? Please?”

  Already knowing the answer, Eliza sighed in resignation. She was starting to learn that if she let Dax do whatever he had his heart set on, he wouldn’t push her and ask again, but more often than not, Eliza usually enjoyed the places he took her to and the things he did for her.

  The only exception was the horror movie marathon he had made her sit through. That hadn’t ended well. Eliza had spent most of the night thinking about the outlandish murders in those films.

  “Okay, once a month you can treat me like a lady, but I’m marking this one down for the month, so yo
u can’t try and play me.”

  Dax gasped, feigning to be scandalized.

  Eliza smiled.

  “Me? Detective, I am appalled that you think I would behave in such a manner. I am very forward with you. Very.”

  The suggestive tone his voice had taken on provoked her in the right ways, but before she could scold him about it, the intercom for her apartment buzzed again, and Melanie’s voice came through it.

  “Detective Miller, are we doing this or not? It’s freezing out here!”

  “Eliza,” Dax said in a low hiss. “She is there to help you, and you left her standing outside in the bitter cold? What would your mother say? Let her in.”

  “She would say that I’m a cop, and that we’re cautious about random strangers coming to where we live when we have no recollection of giving them our address,” Eliza replied as she walked over to the intercom. She pushed the button that unlocked the building’s main door, then pushed the one for the intercom. “Third floor. Fifth door on the right.”

  “Are you telling me the reason why you left that poor girl standing outside in the cold is because I didn’t tell you that she was coming over, and that you were calling me to confirm, but then got sidetracked by everything else?”

  “Exactly that, Mr. Collins.”

  Dax laughed, and the warm sound of it caused Eliza to laugh softly with him. “Detective, you certainly do know how to spin a beautiful tale, but it isn’t as beautiful as you are. Let Melanie work her magic, and I’ll see you soon.”

  Eliza sighed, but said, “I’ll see you soon.”

  The call ended, and Eliza reveled in the warm, fuzzy sensation that hit her without fail after every phone call with Dax. She blamed his voice for the reaction; she could listen to it for hours.

  A knock on the door ruined her moment, and Eliza scowled. She was going to make Dax spend an hour waxing poetic to her to make up for the interruption. She answered the door, and Melanie—a petite woman with beautiful bronze skin—stood in front of her, blinding Eliza with her dazzling smile.