Men in the audience, standing in front of the stage, held up small paddles. An auctioneer was on the stage, standing next to the woman. It was over in a matter of minutes. An old man with a lazy eye I didn’t recognize bought the thirty-year-old for thirty thousand dollars. It was a lot of money to me, but somehow it didn’t seem as though it was enough for someone’s life.
The night wore on; women were paraded out, one after the other. All of the pretty, none of them older than that first woman. I tried not to look at them, and didn’t for long, but as they were led through the door at the back of the stage, I would steal a glance. I couldn’t help it. I had to see them, if only for a moment.
Then she walked through. I didn’t know her of course, but something about her struck me. She was gorgeous. She seemed a few years younger than me. She had dark olive skin and dark hair. Her eyes were the brown of a coffee with too much milk in it. She wasn’t American; I could tell that just by looking at her. She was Mediterranean. She had to be from Greece or someplace similar.
The young woman was wearing a short dress, much like the first one had been. She was curvy, with well-defined hips and large breasts which pushed at the top of her dress. Her nipples were hard, natural in the chilly warehouse. She looked terrified. Her lips were plump and sensual, and they were pulled into a tight frown. I saw her, and I felt as though I had known her for years.
The bidding was fast and furious on her. It got up to fifty thousand, and the next thing I knew it was at seventy thousand. I thought quickly. I had a couple hundred thousand in the bank. Not bad for a grunt like me. I knew how to save. The bidding was up to one hundred and fifteen thousand when it started to slow. I stepped forward just before the auctioneer could award the olive skinned woman to a fat guy with a bad combover.
“One hundred twenty thousand,” I said.
Silence. Every face turned towards me. I ignored them and stepped to the woman. I looked to the fat man with the bad hair, to see if he would bid more. He didn’t.
“Sir,” the auctioneer started. “That’s quite a sum.”
“I’m good for it,” I growled. Vlad made his way over to me from the other side of the stage.
“What are you doing kid?” He asked.
“What I can,” I said. I was saving the beautiful woman. Saving her from that horrid fat man, saving her from a horrible life. I had to do something. I had to do something for her. I pulled my checkbook out of my pocket. I wrote a check and handed it to the auctioneer, and then I took the woman by the hand and undid the rope there at her wrist. When she was free, I took her by the hand and pulled her off the stage.
“Kid,” Vlad said to my back. He trailed off, but there was a lot of unspoken meaning. I knew what he was saying, and I didn’t care. I led the woman outside, and then across to my car. I helped her in and then climbed behind the wheel. I looked over to her. She was terrified.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” I said, wishing that she wasn’t afraid of me. She didn’t say anything, just stared at me with wide eyes. I turned the key in the ignition, and my car roared to life, and I sped off towards my downtown apartment.
2
I knew I was in trouble. I knew I had no right to do what I had done, and I knew Mr. Black was going to be coming after me. I didn’t care. I welcomed it, in a way. My boss was involved in sex trafficking? It was too much. It wasn’t something I was comfortable with, and it wasn’t something I was going to put up with. I would have to run, or end it. As I pulled into my apartment’s parking garage, I swore to end it. I wasn’t going to run. I had saved one woman, the beautiful woman who sat beside me, who hadn’t taken her eyes off of me, who looked terrified. But what about the rest of the women there that night? The ones who had been sold before the Mediterranean beauty I bought? What about those who were sold after.
“We have to hurry,” I told the scared woman. “I want to make sure you’re safe, and then you can go. You can go home, I can help you, but you can’t yet. You’re going to have to stay with me for a bit.”
“You’re letting me go?” She asked. Her voice was low and soft; it sounded sweet like honey. I had looked to her before I climbed out of my car.
“Yes,” I said simply, and then I was out and rushing around to her side. I opened her door and helped her out.
“You saved me,” she said. And then she threw her arms around me. I let her, and slid my own arms around her, and took in her scent as she buried her face in my chest. She smelled wonderful, like peppermint. She looked up to me, placed her hand on my face. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet. They’ll be coming for me, and you. Both of us. We have to get safe, and then we’ll get you home. We have to get out of Brighton Beach,” I said.
Brighton Beach was the Russian equivalent of Chinatown. It was in New York, ocean on one side, city on the other. From my bedroom window, I had a view of the water. We rushed upstairs, and I took a minute to glance at it. Silver moonlight was reflecting on the slow rolling waves. A boat slid through the dark water, churning up white behind it.
My new bride of sorts stood by the door while I packed. I took my guns, took some clothes, and took the fifty grand I kept in cash hidden in a safe behind a painting hanging in my bedroom. We hurried down to my car. We had only been in the apartment for five or so minutes before we were peeling out of the parking lot.
“What’s your name?” I asked the woman. She had an accent, and I was confident that I had been right about her being from Greece.
“Chloe,” the woman said softly.
“I’m Peter,” I said. We drove through the city, the night traffic not as bad as the day time traffic, but still forcing us to go much more slowly than I would have preferred. We were stopped at a red light when a dark sedan pulled up behind us. I kept my eyes on my rear view mirror. It was exactly like my own car, exactly like the ones Mr. Black gave all of his grunts. I realized that I was an idiot for driving my own car, but there was nothing I could do about it now. I watched the vehicle behind us, waiting for the door to open, waiting for Vlad or someone else to step out and open fire. The light turned green, and I pulled through the intersection. The car behind me turned, and I realized I had been holding my breath the whole time. I let it out in a gasp and glanced over to Chloe. She was looking at me, her legs pulled up, her knees to her chest and her arms wrapped around them. She didn’t say anything, but she smiled at me, and I was reminded why I was throwing my life away in the first place. There was something about that woman, something that made it all worth it.
We got out of the city and drove for two hours before we finally stopped at a small motel. It was situated along a lonely two-lane highway. The clock on the dash read one in the morning. An hour previous I had stopped in a diner parking lot and swapped my plates with another dark sedan. It wouldn’t stand up to a cop running the plates, but it passed the eye test. I hoped I wouldn't get anyone hurt, but years of being the bad guy had given me a healthy sense of self-preservation.
We parked behind the motel and walked around to the front office. The clerk was a guy of only about twenty, and his eyes were glued to a small TV with some superhero movie playing. I paid for a room and took Chloe to it before getting my bag and joining her.
“I could use a shower,” she said and I nodded. She went into the bathroom and shut the door, but she seemed to rethink it and left it open halfway. From where I sat on the end of the bed I could see the bathroom mirror, and her reflection, facing away, as she undressed. She pulled the dress off, up and over her head. She wore no bra, and tossed the dress to the floor, standing in just a pair of black silk panties which hugged the rounded curves of her ass perfectly. I felt myself harden. She bent then, sliding the panties down, and I got a glimpse of her pink slit from behind as she bent, and I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the mirror.
She stepped out of her panties and bent again, starting the water in the shower. I yearned to go to her, to take her there, bent over the side of the tub, but I knew I wouldn�
��t do that. The woman was sold into sexual slavery. She just wanted to go home. I wouldn’t take advantage of Chloe like that.
As she showered, I went over by the window, curling one finger around the edge of the blind so I could pull it away from the window and peek out. I didn’t see anyone. In the bathroom, the water stopped. I hear the floor creak as she stepped out of the tub. I glanced into the bathroom from where I stood, but I could only see a sliver of the mirror, just her arm reflected as she dried off. I was still trying to peek when the door opened all the way suddenly, and she was standing there, nude save for a towel wrapped around herself.
“I have no other clothes,” she said. I nodded, cursing myself on the inside. That was something I should have thought of.
“I have some gym shorts you could wear,” I said. “And a tee shirt. It will be big, but we can stop tomorrow.”
Chloe shrugged and then pulled the towel off of her, letting it fall to the floor. She stood before me, nude, in all of her glory. I couldn’t help but look her over. Her breasts were rounded and heavy, her nipples dark and hard. She had a strip of pubic hair above her cunt, and her hips were round and feminine. I grew hard again. She reached up, tying her dark hair which fell past her shoulders back into a ponytail, holding it in place with a small elastic band she was wearing around her wrist. I saw a scar there on her wrist, white and shiny in the dim light of the motel room. I didn’t ask her about it.
“I can sleep naked,” she said, as she made her way to the bed and got in. There was only one bed, something else I hadn’t thought about enough. I had just asked for a room, and the clerk must have assumed we were together. Would she expect me to sleep on the floor? I wasn’t sure. “I’m hungry,” she said from under the blanket. It wasn’t a complaint, and she wasn’t whining, she was just telling me.
“I can go check out the vending machine,” I said, turning and heading for the door. I turned back to her as I opened it. “Don’t answer the door, not for anyone. I have the key.”
She nodded, and I left. I was back quickly, worried to be seen. I had chips and candy bars and a couple of danishes wrapped in plastic. She sat up, the blanket falling from her magnificent breasts. I tried not to stare at them, but I was just a man, and I surely took a couple of looks, but I tried to keep it on the sly.
For her part, Chloe didn’t seem embarrassed. Maybe it was a Greek thing, but in America, no woman was so comfortable with her own breasts or nudity. We ate on the junk food, both of us realizing we were famished and starving. We laughed a lot, and at one point she bent forward and wiped a bit of chocolate from the corner of my mouth.
When the food was gone, we grew more somber.
“What are we going to do?” The woman asked me, lying down and pulling the blanket to her chin once more. I missed her breasts immediately.
“We’re going to keep you safe.”
She laughed, but there wasn’t much mirth in it. “How are we going to do that?”
“I’m going to have to go after them. The men running it. My old boss. They’ll never leave us alone.”
“Are you a bad man?” Chloe asked me. I looked to her, not sure of how to answer.
“I’ve done things I’m not proud of,” I said finally. Chloe shrugged her shoulders under the blanket.
“You don’t seem like a bad man to me.”
I smiled and stood, and threw the wrappers from our junk food feast in the small wastebasket near the bed. “I’m going to shower,” I said.
“I’m going to sleep,” she replied. And I went into the bathroom. As I stood under the hot water, I had time to think about what I was doing What I had done. I had put it all on the line, for a woman I didn’t even know. And I wasn’t sorry about it. I knew it was the right thing. I had spent my whole adult life doing the opposite of the right thing, and finally, I was doing something I could be proud of.
When I was clean, I turned off the shower and stepped out of the tub. I stood in front of the sink, wiping my hand across the mirror there, cleaning the fog away so I could see myself. I still looked the same, so why did I feel like a different person?
When I left the bathroom, I was clad in just boxers. The room was dark, and Chloe was just a lump under the blanket that I could hardly see. I hesitated, and then climbed into the bed next to her. I lay on my back, hoping she wouldn’t wake up, hoping she wouldn’t kick me out of the bed.
She wasn’t even sleeping. Shortly after I lay down, I felt her move, and then her hand was on my chest, under the covers. I turned and could see her eyes, open and reflecting what little light there was in the room, coming from a bit of blue from a sign outside, squeezing in past the closed blind.
“I was supposed to be someone’s bride,” she said softly.
“I can get you home.”
“They told me what’s expected of me. I’m supposed to do what my husband says.”
“You don’t have a husband, though. I didn’t want that for you.”
“You bought me. You paid for me. I’m yours.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Don’t think like that.”
She slid closer to me under the blanket. I could feel one of her breasts pushed against my arm. Her nipple hardened. I felt myself growing hard, my cock pulsing against the front of my boxers.
“You are a good man,” Chloe said softly, and when I turned my head to look at her, she pressed her lips to mine.
She tasted like chocolate since we had eaten the junk food. She had brushed her teeth with a spare toothbrush I had brought after her shower, and I tasted the toothpaste too. I pressed my tongue against her bottom lip, and she parted those plump lips to me, and our tongues dance together. Her hand slid down my stomach, fingertips running over my abs, sliding her hand under the waistband of my boxers, and then through the shock of brown pubic hair, I had between my legs before she was at my cock, wrapping her thin, petite fingers around my rigid member.
“Chloe,” I said softly, breaking the kiss, but she shook her head and pressed her lips to mine again. I turned on my side as she tugged the front of my boxers down, fully freeing my cock. My swollen head pressed against her pelvis, nestled in that strip of pubic hair she had, and she jerked me, sliding her fingers up and down my shaft.
I placed my hand on her breast, squeezing the fatty tissue, feeling her nipple on my palm. Her grip on my cock tightened and I groaned. She pulled away from me then, throwing the blanket off of us and to the floor. She pushed me lightly, and I rolled onto my back as she hovered her head over my crotch. She glanced at me sideways and then opened her mouth and lowered her face until my cock was sliding into her mouth. She sucked the head of my hard member first, swirling her tongue in a circle motion around it. Her hand was still on me, jerking me slowly up and down. She was on her knees beside my hips, and I reached down and squeezed her ass before sliding two fingers along her wet slit.
“Put them inside me,” she begged, taking her mouth from my cock long enough to speak, and then she was sucking me again, going further, this time, moving her hand as her lips slid down my shaft and the bulbous head of my cock pressed against the back of her throat.
I did as she asked, sliding those two fingers rubbing her into her tight snatch. We lay like that for a while, as I fucked her furiously with my fingers and she bobbed up and down on her cock, her mouth warm and wet, her tongue working overtime. She cupped my balls with one hand, squeezing them softly and gently and pulling on them.
She stopped so suddenly I thought I had done something wrong, but she was moving quickly, throwing one leg over my head and chest and climbing atop me that way, so her sweet snatch was inches from my lips. “Make me come,” she moaned back to me, before swallowing my cock once more. I obliged, lifting my head and tasting her pussy. Her juices were warm and flowing, and I probed the depths of her pussy with my tongue, reaching up to rub her engorged clit with the pad of my index finger.
It didn’t take long with my tongue and lips on her to make her come. She took my cock o
ut of her mouth, using a tight grip to jerk me furiously as she yelled and rocked backwards, grinding her pussy into my face. I felt her body spasm atop me, and she screamed in pleasure again, pressing her open mouth on my thigh to muffle the sound. Her pussy was wet before, but as she came it was soaking, her juices flowing down across my lips and cheeks and chin.
When she was done, she rolled off me slowly, and I didn’t need to be told what to do. I moved as quickly as she had before, positioning myself between the beautiful woman’s spread legs. She reached down and guided me into her, and then we were fucking, fast, hot and passionate. I bent, and our lips met. When I broke the kiss I moved my head lower, taking her nipples into my mouth, in turn, my fingers rolling whatever one I wasn’t sucking on until it was its turn.
The bed was shaking with each thrust, and her arms went around me, her hands on my back, her long cherry red nails digging into my skin there.
“I’m going to come,” I said, confident that she wasn’t taking birth control, and she replied in kind.
“Not in me,” she said, and though I felt a flash of disappointment, I pulled out and she shifted quickly, sliding down and sideways to take me into her mouth once more. I put my hand to the back of her neck and helped her find a quick pace, her lips flying up and down my shaft.
I grunted as I came, her only warning to the fact that my cock jumped in her mouth and spurted warm sticky come down her throat. She slowed her pace and sucked softly on the tip of my cock as I came, swallowing every last drop. When I was finally spent she lay down completely, smiling up to me, my dick still hard, shining with her pussy juices and spit in the low light, throbbing right above her face. She giggled and arched up and planted a kiss on the underside of my cock.
I fell onto the bed beside her and climbed over me long enough to pull the blanket from the floor, and situated it over us. She lay curled up beside me, naked as I was, one of my arms tucked under her. We fell asleep.
Romance: Young Adult Romance: The Perfect Game (A Highschool Football Romance) (Bad Boy Nerd New Adult Romance) Page 14