by Amber Lin
I fought for air, for acknowledgment, pounding on his chest with my fists. He grunted in pain but didn’t relent. He trapped my arms, holding his weight on the soft inner flesh. It was agony, and my body wrenched in response, but none of it could compare to the pain he must have felt. With those bruises, those injuries, even holding himself up would be torture; even moving inside me, against me would be pain. We rocked in it, reveled in it like hedonists who had just discovered that pain spilled over became pleasure.
My hips rode the air, reaching up for his. He slammed me back down on each thrust, an ache reverberating through my limbs.
I couldn’t find an end or a beginning. “Help me.”
“Stop?”
“More, more.”
He released my arms and reared back. He wrapped both his hands around my neck, not squeezing or pressing. Just holding me there by my most vulnerable place. It felt like worship.
With the slightest constriction, I felt the flesh of his palm as I breathed, as I swallowed. Like a dam torn apart, tears ran down my cheeks. Heartbroken. My heart was breaking for him.
He didn’t want my pity. I gave him something else, everything else. I sobbed out a release, his every entry brought a new surge of heat, relaxing as the last of the pleasure lapped at my heels. When I had finished, he covered me with his body, filling me until it was too much before letting me breathe once again. Each thrust was marked by a small expulsion of air. Ah, ah, ah. And it drew out, melting together into a masculine sound, the horizon between power and helplessness.
He collapsed on top of me, a slippery weight of sweat and sex and probably blood from one of us, maybe both. It was the cleanest I had ever felt, not marred by shame or misuse. The oils of his body were like a baptism, washing away my sins and leaving me reborn. He panted there, shudders gripping his body as he caught his breath. His stillness worried me. Don’t let him regret this. Don’t let him withdraw.
“Hell,” he said, rolling off me.
I followed, tucking my body against his, heedful of the jagged cut that ran wetly along his side and the matching one on my leg.
In the aftermath, cold settled over us by degrees. With it came dread, that he would forget or go back to the old way.
“Are you okay?” he asked gruffly.
“I’m fine, I promise.”
He turned his face away, and I clutched his arm as if it were a life raft. Where did this clinginess come from? I didn’t know, but it gripped me, and in turn, I couldn’t let him go. I didn’t mind his roughness earlier, my split lip. I couldn’t stand for him to push me away. If he left me now, there wouldn’t be any time to make it right between us. It wasn’t fair to him, putting all that pressure on one experience. Was it real? Intimacy, love? For once, finally? I had to know, as the unseen timer ticked down to zero. I had to believe I’d lived before I died.
“Please, Luke. Don’t shut me out, not now.”
“What do you want me to do?” he asked with a challenge in his voice. “Tell me what you want me to say.”
I want it to be real between us. It was my plea this time, my unspoken words butting up against an uncaring lover. No, not uncaring. He was hurt and fighting back. I understood that, though I’d rarely done it myself. But that was Luke, who had clawed his way up until the world had given him respect. And this was me, who accepted what I was given and wondered, wondered, wondered if it would ever be enough.
“I’m sorry I pushed you. Forget I asked.” I stroked his chest, hoping his heart would calm.
He sat up, pulling away. “You know what it’s like. Right, Shelly? You know we don’t like to be touched. So why are you all over me? Why can’t I seem to shake you?”
Tears ran down my cheeks. I hated to see him like this, raging and hurting.
“I don’t know,” I said, shivering. I just wanted him to feel better. “I’ll pretend he never told me.”
“What for? You know the truth. You know that I was too much of a coward to tell you myself, even when I knew you did the same. You know that I took it up the ass since I was sixteen, but you know what else? I’m guessing you did too.”
I recoiled. “Stop it.”
“Am I right? If I guessed right, I think I should win a prize.”
My breath exhaled in shaky jolts. “You’re being cruel on purpose. To push me away.”
“Way to state the obvious, Shelly. Next you’ll tell me I know how to suck a cock. Probably better than you, and between the two of us, that’s saying something.”
I stared at him, burning the image of him into my mind. He was rabid, a cornered animal, a tortured one. And I couldn’t help him. I turned and crawled to the other side of the cell. It didn’t have quite the same effect without a slamming door and screech of tires, but we were beyond theatrics. There was only desolation here, only tears streaming down my face as I curled up, facing the wall. The problem with crying is that once you start, you can’t stop. Soon my silent tears had turned into sobs that racked my body. I put my hand to my mouth to try to keep them in, but somehow that only made them worse.
Luke picked me up and cradled me in his lap. I fought him at first, striking out, landing blows only God knows where. It didn’t deter him. If anything, he probably welcomed them, so rife was he with self-disgust.
“Oh God, Shelly. I’m sorry. Yes, hate me. I’m so sorry.”
I curled into his warmth and his hate and cried into his shirt. He rocked me, murmuring endearments and apologies and self-directed epithets until my tears had dried.
My head felt hollow but strangely heavy. “Did you think I would judge you?” I whispered.
His laugh was hoarse. “I don’t need you to judge me. I do that plenty for myself.”
“You did what you had to do to keep your sister safe.”
“I could have walked her into any police station. I should have. If I had, she would still be alive.”
“You were a teenager. You couldn’t know what would happen to her, especially after they had left you in that man’s care.”
“And I thought I could do better. I was so damn cocky. Isn’t that funny? The gay-for-pay guy was cocky.”
It was like watching myself from the outside. So full of anger and hurt, covering it all up with sexually insulting humor.
“How did she—” I bit my lip, stoppering the words.
“I wasn’t her pimp, if that’s what you thought. There are some lines even I wouldn’t cross.”
“I didn’t think that,” I said quickly and felt some of the tension leak from his body.
He swallowed. “I was gone every night. She was bored, like I told you. She started hanging out with a bad crowd who got her hooked on heroin. That was the point I really got scared. I knew we were both in over our heads, but I was so wrapped up in my own shit. I thought I could handle it all. I started being more careful with money, so she wouldn’t spend it all on the drugs. That’s when she started hooking, to make up the money. Most of the girls she hung out with were already doing it, so I guess it didn’t seem like a big deal. I only found out later, after she had gone.”
His grip on me tightened, and I couldn’t quite breathe, but at that moment, I would rather have suffocated than deny him comfort.
“I failed her,” he said, his voice cracking. “I failed her so bad, and I could never stop trying to make it right, even though I know it’s too late.”
I wrapped my arms around his neck, holding him to me. We shifted slightly so that his head lay on my chest. I wondered if he could hear my heart race, and I struggled to calm myself as if that could calm him too. At length, his breathing evened out, though small shifts in his body told me he was still awake.
Pulling himself up, he faced me, solemn and determined. His eyes were streaked red, though they didn’t look nearly as bad as mine probably did—puffy and swollen from tears unshed.
He brushed a tear that had remained on my cheek. “I owe you an apology. The things I said were unforgivable.”
“You were upset
.”
A ghost of a smile touched his swollen face. “I think you would excuse me from murder if I tell you I had a bad day.”
“I forgive you.”
His voice grew husky as he said, “I don’t deserve that.”
“Forgiveness isn’t about whether you deserve it or not. It comes freely or not at all. Like love.”
He swallowed. “You do love me, don’t you, Shelly? And I don’t deserve that either.”
He was more deserving of love than anybody I had ever known, but it wasn’t even relevant to how I felt about him. Love wasn’t a choice; it was an accident. Not a climb but a fall. I had slipped somewhere along my prickly path and down, down to the murky depths, hurtling ever farther, ever faster, and the only question left was whether he would meet me at the bottom.
Chapter Eighteen
I crouched behind the flat of the table, which had been turned on its side, wondering how Luke had talked me into this.
It was a suicide mission. His.
The plan was chillingly simple. Luke waited, prone on the floor and armed with our crude and blunt weaponry. He would lure the men to his side and fight them, distracting them long enough for me to escape through the door. I had argued vehemently at the beginning, flat-out refused. How could I leave him to his death? I could go for help, but we both knew it would be too late for him. But then he had pulled me tight and said that if we did nothing, we would both die. Let him do this much, he’d said.
Live, he’d told me.
I understood about guilt, however undeserved, and how it would eat at him in these final minutes if he believed I would die. So I agreed, still unsure whether I could run away. There were moments that defined a person, choices that separated me from my mother. Could I leave him to suffer in my place? Could I live with myself after? It was the same as when Henri had given me that gun. Could I become a murderer? I would save myself, but there were things worth more than my life.
My ankles ached, cold from the chill of the floor. I missed his body warmth, the way he breathed.
It felt like days passed before footsteps sounded from outside the room. I strained to make them out, to separate them into parts and count how many men were there. Two, maybe three.
They paused outside the door. I heard the faint sounds of two men conversing—arguing. That gave me hope. Maybe it wasn’t Henri. No one would argue with him.
I heard a creak, and yellow light flooded the room from the hall, stinging my eyes. A single man walked inside, to Luke. Clop, clop. I recognized his gait. Henri’s gravelly voice muttered something from the center of the room. He always sent his men in first. What was different this time? Who still stood outside the room? This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.
There was a thud, as if he’d kicked Luke, and an exhalation of breath.
“What’s wrong with him?” came a voice from outside. My pulse beat a rapid tattoo in my temple, though I struggled to place his voice. Low, male. Unsurprising in our current situation. There were women who held power in this industry—Jade, for example—but they were rare. Confident, impatient. Those also were hallmarks of a man in power.
“How should I know?” Henri snapped.
The strange part was the power dynamic. I had never seen Henri before with a man more powerful than himself, at least without a full-fledged power struggle. But in Henri’s voice, there was a tremor of uncertainty. A bit of subservience, which was why it took me so long to place. The Henri I knew would never submit, but now I wondered if that undaunted power was as much a mask as my own limitless capacity for subjugation, as if we had both played our parts to the fullest. As if we were each consumed by our roles. A social experiment, indeed.
The other man came into the room. It felt like déjà vu, like I should know him just by the way the air shifted at his presence. One of Henri’s men? An old client? But this felt older than that—ancient, like I had heard this story in an old fairy tale.
Before I could figure it out, Luke made his move. A sharp cry of pain was followed by the fast exhalation of breath, the hair-raising sounds of two bodies in combat. There were only two men, neither of them paid henchmen; it was better odds than we had counted on. I scooted around the side of the table. A quick glance revealed a blur of limbs and boots.
I dashed out of the room, thinking of going for help, of getting the car, of doing something. “Let me do this much,” he had said, and I was, but he would let me do something for him in return. Well, he didn’t really have a choice.
A shot rang out. I thought I heard footsteps. Bursting through the door, I sucked in lungfuls of outdoor air. The woods looked so peaceful. I headed for the line of trees, knowing that if either of them had followed me, I would be safer out of sight.
A flashlight chased my feet, and I stumbled into the woods, hiding behind a tree. I glanced around wildly. I would run to the car. I wouldn’t think about Luke, not yet.
“Michelle Ann Laurent, come out here this instant.”
The words rang out with crushing familiarity. My breath came shorter. I saw black spots covering the wintry foliage before me. I suddenly wished I had known. I should have. If Luke had wanted to show me mercy, he should have conked me on the head with that wrench. Anything to save me from this.
I thought of running again. It was what I had done in that hotel suite. What I had done for so many years. Why not keep going? Leave Luke behind.
Stepping aside from the tree, I said with as much casualness as I could muster, “Hi, Daddy.”
“You went too far this time.”
“Have I been a bad girl?” I smirked, wrapping the cloak of whorishness more tightly around me. Let him see what I had become, what he had made me. “Am I going to get a spanking?”
He came closer. “Don’t make me come get you. It will only make this worse.”
My laugh had a maniacal tilt, breaking cover. “How exactly could it get worse? Please explain that to me.”
“I let you have your fun. But you always knew you’d come home.”
He walked closer. Even in the twilight, I could make out the lines of his face, the gray of his temples. It made him more dignified. Objectively, I could see that he was handsome, to someone who wasn’t his flesh and blood. I hated it, the way beauty could be a privilege and a curse. The way it turned me into a commodity. No, he did that.
“Why are you here?” I asked. “Why now?”
“I’ve never left. How do you think Henri found you? I had trained you. You were mine, and I wasn’t going to let you go, working for a C-note a night. I told him where to find you. I told him to hire you. I’ve been here since the beginning, getting a twenty-five percent cut.”
I felt sick but strangely unsurprised. “Henri isn’t family.”
He frowned. “No, but he was useful. For a time. He always had a weakness for that Chinese bitch. He should have killed her.” His laugh sent chills down my spine. “And then he found the girl. You should have seen him, the proud papa. I almost bought him some cigars.”
A gasp escaped me. Claire was his daughter? “Then why did he pimp her out?”
“Henri is unoriginal,” he said flatly. “He tried to do the same thing I did, but he didn’t understand. I had groomed you from the beginning. So very early. He wanted to take a shortcut, and now look at the mess he made.”
“Groomed me for what?” I spat. “For being a prostitute? Are you telling me you were that hard up for money that you needed a few extra grand a week?”
“It’s not about the money you earned. That was nothing. This is a family business. How else were you going to run it if you didn’t understand it? I couldn’t just put you at the helm. They would have eaten you alive. But now…now you’re strong enough.”
“You’re delusional if you think I’m going to run your business. This business. It disgusts me. The whole thing disgusts, the men and the women and—“Me, me, me. I disgusted me, though I couldn’t tell him that. “The only reason I did it was because—”
&nb
sp; “Because you had to? Because you didn’t know how to do anything else? Other people may buy your excuses but not me. You’re smart and beautiful. You could have done anything, but that’s what you chose to do.”
“I needed the money.”
“Your friend needed the money, and you needed to be the one to give it to her, didn’t you? That’s your Achilles’ heel.”
“Friends?”
“Pride. You live for the gratitude, for praise. We all have a weakness. The only question is whether you let it rule you.”
“Do you?”
He paused before answering softly, “I’m afraid so. It’s you, actually, but you know that.”
Yes, I knew it. I remembered the way his footsteps would pause outside the door before he came in…much like they had earlier tonight in the cell. The hesitation wasn’t his conscience—it was his pride. He didn’t want to be dependent on a little girl. “And you’ve always hated me for it.”
His gaze flicked over me. “You look more like her.”
“Is that all? Would it have turned out differently if I had looked like you instead?”
“I hated her too.” He looked faraway. “That kind of power is unnatural.”
I remembered the story my mother had told me about the princess in disguise. This was the lesson my father would take from it, that a woman held unshakable power, over her father, over the men in her life. The tale looked different to each listener, the lessons it told a testament to our deepest desires.
The most important question came to me, one I had first thought when he came into my room with a bag of her melted-down jewelry. “Why did she leave you?”
“It’s dangerous too, that kind of power. I had to stop her.”