Show Me How

by Harley Slate

  Yes, I can describe all those sensations, but how do I describe what's deeper than mere sensation? How do I describe the emotion pulsing through my blood?

  I clamp my mouth over her mouth in the most desperate of kisses. I press my long body tight all over those soft, welcoming curves. The folds of her pussy open like a rose in bloom, and her knees melt into jelly.

  “Come,” I say. “Come now.”

  “Only if you do. Only if you do.”

  My knees are jelly too. The standing fuck is now beyond us. No choice but to bounce off the wall, hard, and suddenly we're back in bed, our tangled bodies tumbling across the messy sheets, rolling over and over and over. Our fingers find all the right buttons at all the right moments. I can't breathe, can't set the pace, and yet we're coming together, our insides rippling hard and deep. Toe-curling sex, they call it. So toe-curling there's a painful cramp in the sole of my foot, a pain I welcome, because it lets me know this is actually happening, that it's really fucking real.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Emily

  I'm boneless afterward, with no greater desire to do anything other than snuggle up and sleep. How is Jessica not boneless too? She's all woman, and yet she's so powerful. So strong. So tireless.

  She likes to carry me places, and I guess I like being carried. Her body is slick with sexual sweat and all our messy juices, but she smells so real to me. The musky scent of an aroused and gratified woman overwhelms the light touch of expensive Parisian perfume. The insides of my nostrils flutter with pleasure. I never tire of her private scent.

  “We need to get cleaned up.” The four shower-heads in the fancy stall are running, their temperature already adjusted. When did that happen? She sets me down carefully, and I stretch underneath the pounding warmth. The body shampoo she uses has coconut and another fragrance I can't identify. Something fancy, something French.

  I laugh and soap her up with bubbles the way she's soaping me. There's something giddy-making about the afterglow of our shared climaxes. Passion is a champagne that leaves bubbles in the blood.

  A tiny dent forms briefly between her eyes, just for a second. It's cute how she worries. My mom is fine. She'll learn. Mom is mom, she always has been and always will be.

  It's nice having someone worry about us. I've never had that before. It's always been me and my mom against the world. The usual battle to survive.

  “I should spank you, little girl.” She breathes into the back of my neck, and I feel little hairs stand up. “You distracted me.”

  “It's fun distracting you.”

  She swats my bottom, but there's no force behind the swat. I giggle. “Is that supposed to teach me something?”

  “Maybe I just like watching you bounce.”

  Another swat, and then we're somehow massaging each other under the shower spray. I sense she doesn't want to get all messy-dirty again, so I half-squat, half-kneel long enough to wrap my mouth around the swollen folds of that flushed-pink delta. The skin is sensitive there by this point, so I use a lot of tongue rather than a lot of sucking. It's a tickle and a tease, and it isn't long before she's rotating her mound in a frantic circle against my face.

  Yeah. That's it, Jessica. Feel what I can do. You're not the only one who can give.

  I've lost track of how many times I've come myself, but I know how many times she's come, and I want her to catch up, want her to lose herself at the tip of my tongue. It's a power she enjoys, making me come, and I want to enjoy that power too.

  “Uh, uhnnnn... I've got nothing left.” She moans a denial, but I'm not stopping. Moments later, her thighs are rippling, and so is the slick pink entrance to her core.

  I lick and smack my lips. “Thought you had nothing left.”

  “Only you,” she says. “Only you.”

  Sighing, she puts a hand on my shoulder and another on my hip to guide me up. For a moment, she gazes into my eyes. The hot water never seems to run out in this place. That's money for you.

  We look at each other, and she starts to say something else, and then she doesn't. We seem to be pretending she never said the l-word. The sex was intense beyond enduring, that's all it was. Intensity makes people say things they don't mean. Even an eighteen-year-old virgin knows that much.

  Although, fuck, I feel something warm and strange inside of me. I guess I don't even know what I feel.

  Funny thing. After all the fancy shopping, I end up wearing my old clothes Quentin packed for me. He's more of a butler than a personal assistant, as far as I can tell. Whatever he is, he sniffs but offers no further comment on my costume.

  Once we're in the limo, Jessica starts talking on the phone, giving orders and instructions, some of which I understand, many of which I don't. My own phone calls to me, and I turn it on, and there's a rash of notifications from Instagram. Dakota posed with rock star Noelle Northe before a concert, and I have to admit they look cute together. Noelle's semi-famous, but is she rich enough to qualify as a target for the Sugar Mama Seekers?

  She's sexy, lithe and lean, platinum hair like a cloud of golden smoke, with the poreless skin of the musician who never goes out before sunset.

  Although nobody's as sexy as Jessica. And if you want flexibility, Jessica's tongue will provide all the acrobatics a girl could wish. I almost feel sorry for my friend who has to settle for a mere rock star.

  When I leave a quick comment on the photo of Dakota and Noelle just to let everybody know I'm still alive, I'm soon getting a new string of text messages.

  >You go, girl.

  >I'm changing your name to Mystery Brunette.

  Nothing from my mom though. She's usually reasonably responsible about leaving a note, but it isn't unheard of for her to lose track of time, so I don't freak out.

  Jessica puts down her own phone. “Anything?”

  I shake my head. “It's four in the morning. She's asleep.”

  “I don't doubt it, but I'd like to know where she's asleep.”

  She's making me paranoid, and suddenly I don't like it. “Hey, chill on that, OK? I know my mom.”

  “And I know Nick Gavrolovic.”

  Are we having a power struggle over who knows better than who?

  Some of the afterglow is gone. We sit and glare at each other, even though it's silly to get all worked up by my mom's drama.

  A familiar tune sings from my phone. Mom's ringtone.

  “Hey, Mom, I was just wondering where...”

  “Look at the video. I'll call you back.” It isn't Mom's voice or any human voice. It's a robot voice, deliberately synthetic.

  The fuck?

  “Problem?” Jessica asks.

  I turn the screen so she can see it too.

  The video has already started. It isn't a clean, well-lighted place. Concrete floor, steel shelving with some indistinct cans on it. Paint maybe, or some industrial chemical. A woman hogtied on her belly, her wrists and ankles secured together with bright yellow coils of nautical rope. There's a hood over the woman's head, but I already know.

  A skip in the video. It isn't a livestream, then. It's something edited that might have been taken hours ago.

  The hood is gone, and it's my mom. There's a ball gag in her mouth, and her face is distorted by the hopeless attempt to chew it off and scream for help, but there's no mistaking her for anybody else.

  A number scrolls up at the end of the video.

  956, 766, 456.66.

  After a moment, it ticks over to 956,766,456.67.

  “The fuck is that?” I don't even know why that's the question I ask, but the sight of my mom tied up like that and the thought that she might have been videoed hours ago and the thought that she might not even still be alive... I can't think about that. So I ask about the number.

  Jessica's sapphire eyes flash cold steel. “Son of a fucking bitch.” She takes a hard, deep breath. “It's the money Nick Gavrolovic thinks I owe him.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Jessica

  The number keeps ti
cking over penny by penny and second by second but I don't care about the pennies or the seconds. It's the hundreds of millions of dollars I have to be concerned about.

  “Almost a billion dollars,” Emily says. “How can you owe somebody almost a billion dollars?”

  “I don't owe him a fucking dime. I don't have his money. He's being unreasonable about this. Beijing has his money.”

  “Who's Beijing?” Her question reminds me how young she really is.

  “The Chinese government. We lost a major casino investment after the latest crackdown in Macau. What used to be called creative accounting got called money laundering, and they used that label as an excuse to grab people's cash. I got out in time, and he didn't because he wanted to play right up to the line, and now he wants to blame me for his own bad decisions. It's human nature. Billionaires are just as irrational as anybody else. More so, a lot of the time.”

  She blinked. Maybe I'd spoken too quickly. Too matter of factly. She's a bright girl, but she's a civilian with no idea of how the casino industry actually works, and I don't have time to teach her.

  “But you have to pay it.” Her voice is small and scared. “You have to get my mom back.”

  I take both her hands in my hand. If I pay it, I'm broke on my ass at an age where women don't get to start over. Besides, if I get a name for paying ransoms, I'll be targeted constantly. Everybody in my life would be at permanent risk. Not just me. I wouldn't even care if it was just me. But my staff. My people. Quentin.

  Emily Dearborn.

  Anybody I cared about, they'd know how to get to me.

  “We don't pay ransom,” I say. “That way's Venezuela.”

  She blinks, because she doesn't know what I mean. Of course, she doesn't. My sweet innocent girl has no serious idea of how the world really works. I squeeze her hands in my hands, a calming gesture, although on the inside I feel anything but calm.

  “Once rich people start paying ransom, it never stops,” I say. “Same deal as blackmail. It becomes a business. There's a reason kidnapping for money isn't a popular crime in America. It's because people won't pay, insurers won't pay, government and police departments won't let you pay. The minute you pay, that's the day it's open season on innocents. Americans don't pay ransom.”

  That's the rule, and it's a good rule, and even the head of the FBI would tell you the same damn thing, but Emily looks at me with those big brown eyes and says a single sentence that blows the rules all the way to hell. “But it's my mom. They already have her. She's my mom.”

  Fuck.

  Your mom's gone, honey. That video could have been made hours ago.

  But I can't say that. I can't look in those big brown eyes and say those words.

  I can't let those words be true. So they're not. They're not true. Emily's mom is not gone, and I'm going to fix this somehow, and it's fine. It's all going to be fine. Firming my resolve, I take Emily's phone right out of her hand and hit the button to call back the last number. “You have my attention.”

  There's some breathing on the line, ragged and a bit desperate. A sort of “mmphf” sound. Proof of life, I realize. It's Emily's mom behind the gag.

  “Talk to me,” I say. “Whoever's there with her, take off that crappy gag. I need to hear her talk if you want me to believe she's still alive.”

  More breathing. Then a voice, low but feminine and surprisingly sultry. A trained voice. Emily's mom must have dreamed of being an actress in the long ago, before she found her true calling.

  Which, I now remember, is con artist.

  “I'm Cherry Dearborn. Emily's mother.”

  As if I don't already know that. “I know who you are.”

  “Do you want me to scream and cry, or can we take it as a given that I'd liked to be rescued from this shitty situation?”

  A classic steel magnolia. What the fucking hell am I getting myself into with this family? “You're not worth a billion dollars. No matter how much you cry.”

  She laughs. “Neither are you, you fucker.”

  Actually, I am, but I'm not going to get into a technical debate about net worth with Emily's mom. “Did they give you a message for me?”

  “I'm pretty fucking sure I am the message.”

  True. “I'm not transferring a penny to Gavrolovic Industries until I have you back.”

  “Well, that's going to be interesting, because they said to tell you that I'm not coming back until they have their money.” Yeah, she's a cucumber-cool customer, all right. At least I know where Emily inherited her spine.

  “Do you know where you are?”

  “No, but...” She doesn't finish the sentence, but she doesn't have to. Her phone knows where she is. They've all got GPS these days. There's got to be a way to hack into that. Any law enforcement officer, any mid-level security droid, any low-level criminal... pretty much anybody who needs to know where she is can figure it out as long as she's carrying that phone.

  The limo has pulled through the second gate. The castle walls come into view. Fairy tale turrets, but this is no fairy tale.

  Connection ended. I'm not the one who ended it. Whoever was sitting there with Cherry Dearborn probably figured we'd been talking long enough.

  Emily is struggling to keep her face as smooth and calm as her mom's voice sounds, but her eyes are glittering with worry. “What are we going to do?”

  “They want money, and I already know where they'd like me to send it.” There was a conduit set up in those days when Gavrolovic and I were still in business together. He wasn't the kind of known associate the state of Nevada liked to see on a casino license, and a female boss sure as shit wasn't the kind of known associate that his buddies in Macau liked to see. So we were all in agreement about the need for shell companies and a string of back channels to confuse the issue whenever we transferred money back and forth.

  “So send it.”

  The driver has already got out to open the door for us, but we don't move. There isn't a single twitch of impatience or awareness in the man's face. He's as placid and unhearing as a robot. A good man who knows when he shouldn't listen. I make a mental note to give him a raise.

  Meanwhile, right here, right now, it's time to once again take both of Emily's hands in my hands. “Sending the money doesn't guarantee anything except I'm out the money. Why would they ever send her back? I send the money, I lose all leverage. We have to think it through.”

  Her eyes, already shiny, overflow, and two tears run down her cheeks, a tear from each eye. She's holding her face perfectly still, and she thinks she isn't crying, she thinks she's strong, but nobody should have to pretend to be that strong.

  “So what are we going to do? Jessica, you have to fix this. You have to get my mom back.”

  It isn't the first time somebody has tried some shit like this, although they usually have better sense than to go after somebody's mother. Usually, it's a key employee. Somebody who knows something. A player.

  Going after an innocent is a sign of weakness. It means they don't know who the real players are anymore. Or they don't know how to get to them.

  Gavrolovic is fucking up real bad here, and he's going to pay a high price.

  Calming myself, calming both of us, I wrap my arms tight around Emily and pretend not to see she's weeping into me. “It's going to be fine, but it's going to be tense at first, because I'm going to need to buy some time. At first, I'm going to do some things that might seem risky, but they're not as risky as paying the guy off and letting him disappear. We're going to get your mom back. I promise you that on my life.”

  She sniffles, then pushes out of my arms. “You sure you're not saying that because you don't want to give up the money?”

  She doubts me. The fuckers have made her doubt me. Oh, they'll pay for that. I promise myself that.

  I thumb the side of her soft mouth.“I'm saying that because it's the truth. If he has the money, he has no reason to keep your mom alive. She's a witness to kidnapping. A federal offense in America.
If he kills her in the state of Nevada, it's a state crime. But a kidnapping... that's an FBI matter. You see the difference? One crime commands local law enforcement resources that are already strained to the limits in a city with one of the highest murder rates in the United States. The other crime commands the unlimited resources of the entire Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

  She swallows hard.

  Shit. I shouldn't have said that. I've terrified her. Her innocence had shielded her. She hadn't understood such men could kill.

  That such men could kill her mom.

  Now she knows.

  And I have no choice but to go forward, because I can't unsay what I've already said.

  “We have to create a reason for him to give her back. Right now, he's thinking he's better off if she never goes home.”

  Her eyes grow wider and wetter as she considers that. It feels like years, but time is of the essence in a kidnapping, and I doubt we spend more than ten or twenty seconds studying each other's eyes. Maybe she believes me, and maybe she doesn't. I hate it that they've put this wedge between us, and the wider it gets, the more doubts I begin to experience myself.

  Why is the mother still alive even this long? Just to talk to me?

  Maybe. It's possible.

  It's also entirely possible she's in on it.

  I look at Emily, so young and sweet and perfect. Her skin as soft as the proverbial rose petal. Her lips the shape of a kissable heart. Her soft legs, uncertain at first, but quick to learn how to clutch with eagerness.

  She was a real virgin. That much was true. How far would a person go for a billion dollars? How far would a person go for their own mother?

  Her mother the con artist.

  Fuck. I can't think. I can't even breathe.

  Beautiful Emily, the sweetest thing I ever had.

  She was the perfect distraction.

  A honey trap.

  And I fell right into it.

  Chapter Fifteen