Rooke

by Callie Hart

  Taking all of Rooke into my mouth is going to be a challenge for sure, but I’m so turned on right now. I’m ready for whatever happens next. I close my eyes, but Rooke gently taps my cheek with the tip of his index finger. “Eyes on me, princess. Don’t look away. I wanna see the look on your face at all times. I want you to watch my dick sliding into your mouth. I want you to see the moment when I come, as well as feel it. As well as taste it.”

  God. I’ve read about this kind of thing at book club—guys talking dirty, taking control of their women—but I had absolutely no idea just how heady being on the receiving end of that kind of dominance would be. It’s addicting. It’s strange and scary, but it’s also incredibly hot at the same time. Rooke rocks his hips back, sliding himself out of my mouth. Holding onto my hair, keeping me in place, he thrusts into my throat again, until I can barely fucking breathe.

  “Shit! Holy fuck,” he gasps. “I’m so fucking deep.” Again he repeats the action, withdrawing, then thrusting back into my mouth. “Don’t stop teasing yourself, Sasha,” he commands. “I want your legs open wide for me. I want your fingers in your pussy. Now. Do it for me. Don’t make me ask you again.”

  I am his to control. I might as well be a puppet on a string. I have no free will left now. All I have is the intense desire to please him, and I will do that by any means necessary. Rooke’s gaze is cast down between my legs, watching me as I fuck myself with my fingers. I can’t take my eyes off his face, though. His mouth is open, lips parted slightly. His brow is slightly furrowed, and there’s an expression of grim concentration on his face. He continues to thrust himself deep down into my throat, one hand tangled in my hair, refusing to let me move, and I can feel him getting harder and harder with each and every movement he makes.

  “Goddamnit,” he groans. “You’re going to kill me, Sasha. You’re fucking going to kill me with that mouth of yours.”

  I sweep and swirl my tongue, running it over the head of his cock, and he shudders again, jolting violently. “Holy. Fucking. Shit.” He wants to come. I want him to so badly. The taste of him is dizzying; I can’t seem to get enough. Rooke finally locks eyes with me, stroking his free hand down the side of my face. “You’re so goddamn perfect,” he growls. “You’re mine. You’re fucking mine. I won’t let anything else happen to you. I won’t ever let anyone else touch you. I promise. Fuck, I’m getting close…” His head rocks back, and I moan. He’s so fucking hot, I can’t contain myself anymore. I pump my fingers in and out of my pussy, cold, spiraling pins and needles working their way through my body. I can feel it building inside me. I know I’m going to come if I keep on doing what I’m doing, and in this moment nothing on this earth could make me stop.

  Closer…

  Closer…

  Closer…

  I want to close my eyes. I want to sink into this euphoria, allow it to overwhelm and encompass me. Rooke told me not to, though. I keep my eyes trained on him as my climax slams into me like the bullet from a gun. I cry out, moaning, thrashing on the bed, and Rooke reacts in kind. “Fuck. That’s it, baby. That’s it. Come for me. Come all over your fingers for me.”

  His movements quicken, his cock driving deeper and deeper into my mouth, and then there are fireworks going off in my head and he’s coming, too, so hard that he roars, his head kicking back, his back curving to extreme degrees as he flounders in his orgasm. I swallow him. I don’t want to spit out the come he leaves in my mouth. It’s part of him, a vital part of him, and I want it inside me.

  “Holy shit.” He swallows thickly, releasing his grip on my hair. I lie back on the bed, still staring up at him, completely stunned by the fury of what just happened between us. Rooke looks like he can’t really believe it either.

  “Give me your hand,” he whispers. I hold up my left, but he shakes his head. “The other one.”

  “That one’s covered—”

  “Give it to me.” His eyes are stormy, dark and dangerous. He’s not to be messed with right now. I slowly raise my right hand, conscious of the fact that my fingers are slick and wet with the evidence of my own orgasm. “You think you can just swallow me and there wouldn’t be consequences? There are consequences to every action you make, Sasha. This is what happens when you swallow my come.” He sucks my fingers into his mouth, first the index finger and then the middle finger. His eyes close as he licks and sucks, taking care to clean each of my fingers. If I’d read this in a book, I might have accepted that it would be hot and moved on. But let me tell you now: Rooke Blackheath sucking your slick, wet fingers after you just made yourself come with them is not something you can move on quickly from in real life. It’s the most erotic, sexual thing that has ever happened to me, and I fucking revel in it.

  “Your pussy is mine, Sasha,” he says quietly. His eyes glitter, a small, perilous smile playing around the corners of his mouth. “Don’t ever deny me. I’m going to want to fuck and lick and play with it every day. If you try and stop me, there will be consequences to that action, too.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  THE RITZ

  ROOKE

  “I can’t tell you something I don’t know, man. Come on! Please! This is fucking crazy, Rooke. You know me. I deal in prescription meds and pot. I don’t get caught up with crazy dudes that break into museums.”

  Mike Maurizio, my sometimes friend and drug dealer, flinches as I raise my fist in the air. My knuckles are killing me. I shouldn’t have used my hands on him but I lost my temper. It’s been a long-ass time since I’ve done that. They teach you an awful lot of anger management techniques in juvi. I didn’t think I was paying much attention at the time, but in hindsight some of those techniques must have worked their magic on me, because it’s been years since I’ve really lost control.

  Mike hasn’t put up much of a struggle as I’ve thrown him around the dingy basement of his mother’s walkup. I start to feel a little remorseful as he tries to back away from me, hands raised. “You may not work with people like him, Mike, but you know fences and you like to run your mouth. The cops said this guy wanted to steal something valuable from the museum. Something he could sell to make a profit. Guys like that usually have a buyer already lined up.”

  “I read the papers, too, dude. That guy was fucking crazy. He hadn’t thought any of it through. Why do you think he would have had a buyer lined up?”

  This is a really good point. I’m just bullshitting Mike at this stage, trying to scare him into spilling anything he might know. It’s a futile task, I’m aware, but I’m at my wit’s fucking end. I combed the city while Sasha was in the hospital, looking for the redheaded motherfucker that hurt her, and I haven’t been remotely successful in finding him. I’ve found pimps and hookers, plenty of meth addicts and shady pawnbrokers, dealers, thieves, and con men, but I haven’t found a ginger guy with a hole in the side of his head.

  I wanted to ask Sasha for a more detailed description of the bastard earlier, but I took one look at her and knew she wouldn’t approve of this. Her beautiful face was black and blue. Her lip was swollen and angry, and she seemed completely worn out. Asking her to talk about what happened some more was the last thing she needed. She probably didn’t need me coming in her mouth quite so violently, but shit. She took over. I could easily have not touched her. I could have left her well alone, but I could tell that would have made things worse. She needed the release.

  I grapple hold of Mike by the collar of his shirt, jerking him toward me, almost tearing him off the sofa he’s sitting on. “Tell me where you’d take something you wanted to sell, then. Something rare. Something easily recognizable.”

  “I don’t know. The Ritz, maybe? Arnold’s been paying out a lot for things recently, not asking as many questions as usual. And even if he hasn’t bought anything, he’ll probably have a better idea of who has.” I let go of Mike and he runs his finger around the inside of his shirt collar, scowling. “Didn’t need to be so damn rough, man. Now my mom’s gonna be asking what the hell I’ve been up to again.
I got enough going on without you showing up here like a crazy person, thumping me in the face for no reason.”

  “Do you have any pot?”

  “When do I not have pot?”

  “Point.” I slump down onto the sofa next to him, holding my head in my hands. “Sorry, dude. Feeling a little mentally frayed right now.”

  “I’m mentally frayed every day. I don’t go around hitting people.” He’s salty, and I don’t really blame him. Thanks to all the drugs he’s done over the past fifteen years he has a five second memory, though. All I have to do is sit here long enough and he’ll forgive me. Rummaging around in a small wooden jewelry box resting on the arm of the sofa, Mike takes out a joint and sparks it, sending a plume of thick smoke up in a cloud over our heads.

  “You’re so ghetto,” I inform him. “Haven’t you heard of a bowl before?”

  He holds onto a lungful of smoke; his body starts to jerk and he releases it, coughing. “Haven’t you ever heard of asking nicely, asshole? I would have given you that information without you having to wale on me first.”

  I take the joint he offers me and I take a deep drag on it. “Have you ever…just…lost your fucking mind? Like, completely just lost it. Like you have no idea where it went, or how to get it back?”

  “Only once. At summer camp. My cousin Brenda. She kept flirting with my best friend Damien, and dude. I wanted her bad. She was the first kid in our year to get boobs. Not ittie bittie tittie committee boobs.” He cups his hands in front of his chest, squeezing imaginary flesh. “Real boobs.”

  “Urgh. Gross. Your cousin?”

  “Hey, when you’re twelve years old, stuff like that doesn’t matter. Not even for a minute. You know, Brenda turned into a grade-A bitch. I’d probably still fuck her now if the opportunity presented itself, though.”

  ******

  I’m pretty fucking high by the time I leave Mike’s. The Ritz is actually a small jeweler’s shop below a bed and breakfast in Harlem; both the jeweler’s and the bed and breakfast are run by the same guy—a short, overweight Armenian guy named Arnold. Every time I say his name, I think of that Hey, Arnold! Cartoon character with the football-shaped head. In reality, Arnold from the Ritz looks nothing like the fictional character, but I can’t seem to shake the association.

  A couple of blocks away from the shop, I check the antique Rolex on my wrist, a gift given to me by the daughter of one of our clients who died last year. The previous owner of the watch had been coming to the antiques store for years—years longer than I’ve been working there—and he bequeathed it to Duke in his will. Duke took one look at the cracked tan leather strap and the dull shine to the face and handed it over to me without a second thought. The piece must be worth about fifteen thousand dollars, but Duke’s tastes run a little more expensive and shiny.

  It’s eleven fifteen. Technically Arnold should be closed by now, but when I round the corner onto 125th I’m hardly surprised to see light still blaring out into the darkness, escaping between the cracks in his shutters. I don’t knock on the door. I make sure to ring the bell—one short, sharp blast to make sure he knows it’s one of his regulars.

  Inside a rabble of dogs start barking; they slam their bodies into the reinforced door with the steel bars, snarling like savages. After a few moments, Arnold’s very round, non-football-shaped head appears on the other side of the glass. “You know, where I come from, it’s considered very bad luck when a crow appears in front of your house,” he says. I hear him perfectly, even over the racket the dogs are making.

  “Good thing I’m a rook and not a crow, then.”

  Arnold waves off this comment, unlocking a series of deadbolts on the other side of the door. “Rook. Crow. They are one and the same to me. What are you doing here so late?” He kicks at one of the dogs, shooing it back so he can open the door. For all their ferocious barking and snapping, they run at me, jumping up at me as soon as they can wriggle through the gap, licking at my hands and panting.

  “I’m looking for someone.”

  “I don’t deal in people. I deal in things. Things are easier to control. Tea?”

  “No, thank you.” I slip into the shop and Arnold begins the laborious task of closing all the deadbolts again. The inside of the shop smells like cinnamon and cloves, like the little black cigarillos Arnold smokes. The counters are cluttered with contraband probably not seen during regular opening hours: guns; knives; a set of knuckle dusters. A solid brick of gold rests on top of a stack of invoices like it’s a common paperweight.

  “Are you sure you won’t take some Lapsang Suchong?” Arnold mumbles, hobbling around the counter.

  I wrinkle my nose in answer.

  “All right. If you change your mind, you keep it to yourself. It’ll be too late by then.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  Arnold measures loose tea leaves into a silver strainer with shaky gnarled hands. “Who is this person you’re looking for?” he asks bluntly, still going about his task.

  “A deadbeat. The guy who broke into the museum the other day. You know who I’m talking about?”

  “I know someone broke into the museum the other day. I don’t know anything else, I’m afraid.”

  I don’t know if I believe him. He’s looking down, focused on not spilling tea leaves everywhere, and I can’t get a gauge on him without looking him directly in the eye. I stoop down, leaning heavily against the counter. “He hurt someone. A friend of mine. What would you do if someone hurt one of your friends, Arnold?”

  “I would kill them of course,” he says mildly. “I understand your need to find this person, Rooke. That doesn’t change the fact that I can’t help you. I wish that I could. If I could tell you a name or an address, then you would be happy, and I like to make you happy. Especially when it’s so late at night and I’d like to finish my inventory and go to bed. But since I haven’t any clue who this person is, I regret that you’re going to have to leave my shop an unhappy man. That pains me, it really does.”

  Hurting Arnold isn’t really an option. Not if I don’t want to get myself kneecapped and dumped in the Hudson. Besides, the guy is ancient. It would feel wrong hitting him. At least Mike could have fought back if he’d had the fucking stones to.

  I don’t owe Arnold anything, and you’d think that would put me in his good graces. However, if you owe Arnold something, you’re in his debt in more than one way. You don’t just owe him money. You owe him your fealty, you’re at his beck and call. You owe him a favor, and boy does he call in those favors. If you don’t owe him any favors, there’s a power imbalance in the relationship as far as Arnold is concerned. For some reason, he’s less likely to help you out if he feels like you’re his equal, which means I am shit out of luck on that front.

  The only way I’m gonna get a guy like Arnold to help me out is if I have something to pawn with him, or outright sell to him at a discounted rate. I immediately think of my watch but then change my mind. I’m sentimental over the thing. I have no idea why, but giving it up, even when I got it as a gift, feels wrong somehow. I have nothing else of value on me, so where does that leave me?

  Arnold finishes the ritual of his tea making and lifts the comically small tea dish to his mouth, blowing on the pale liquid inside. “Your mother came here yesterday,” he says softy. “She was looking for you.”

  “My mother?”

  Arnold tips his head to one side, indicating that he was just as surprised as I am now. Most people come to know Arnold through dodgy dealings and underhanded mischief. That’s how I came to know him for the second time in my life. The first time I came to know him, he was my father’s antiques dealer and a family friend. I spent summers here, cataloguing the estate sales that came in and dusting high shelves that had never been dusted before. Then came high school and all of the chaos that followed with puberty, and Arnold just kind of faded from the backdrop of our family life. He was a friendly uncle who simply…disappeared.

  The second time I came to know
him, I was beaten black and blue, and a cracked-out junkie was trying to split my head open with a tire iron over a bag of money I was transporting for Jericho. Car money. Mob money. That is to say, Arnold’s money. Every blood-stained, tainted dollar bill that passes hands in the New York underground eventually makes its way back to him. It’s beyond weird that my mother would come here looking for me. I haven’t mentioned Arnold to her in years. She has no idea that I’m still connected with him now.

  “She brought me this tea,” Arnold says. “She was wondering if I knew how you were supporting yourself these days. I told her I hadn’t seen you in a very long time, of course. She was…dubious, shall we say.”

  “Does she know what you do here?”

  Arnold gives me a sharp, chilling glance. “Does she know that I sell jewelry? That I provide bed and breakfast services to those in need of it? I assume she knows. The sign above the door clearly states these things.”

  “All right. That was a stupid question. I’m sorry.”

  Arnold grunts in agreement. “Your mother is an interior designer. She cuts the crusts off her sandwiches. The thread count on her bed sheets runs into the thousands. How would such a woman know anything of the shady dealings that occur here after the sun goes down? I thought you perhaps might have mentioned something to her…”

  The way he trails off at the end of his sentence is a suggestion. A deadly suggestion. If he thinks for a second that I’ve been running my mouth off, or even accidentally uttering his name in circles where it should never be uttered, I am a motherfucking dead man. I shake my head, laughing under my breath. “I’m not that careless, Arnold. You know I’m not.”

  He stares at me for a second, and then nods once, short and sharp. A decisive nod. “True. Better this is brought to your attention, though. Better you’re aware of a potential problem on the horizon now rather than later.”