Tramp (Hush Book 1)

by Mary Elizabeth

  My defensive wall’s flawed, not nearly as tall or strong as it was before I met Talent, and small signs of distress leak through the cracks. Talent’s shoulders fall as my eyes fill with tears, and my hands tremble at my sides. The show of weakness softens him up, but it only pisses me off. Balling my hands into fists to keep from shaking, I blink away tears and dig deep to reinforce my protective barrier with everything I have.

  I’m thrown back into a place so unemotional and void of richness, I nearly gasp at the loss of warmth I didn’t realize I’ve become accustomed to. But it’s what I need to stand up to Talent.

  Talent pushes away from the kitchen counter and scrubs his hands down his face. “I don’t think either one of us has the energy for this, Lydia. Can we drop it and eat our meal?”

  Suddenly I’m in front of him, and with one swipe of my hand, I knock the box of lo mein off the countertop. I shove my hands into Talent’s chest and say, “Leave or I’ll call the cops. Unless you want your face on the front of the newspaper tomorrow morning, you won’t make me say it again.”

  His dark eyes follow the mess of food on the floor, unconcerned with my assault or threat. The corner of his mouth bends into a condescending smirk, and instead of prolonging our standoff, I make good on my promise and head to the couch where I left my phone.

  I don’t take more than a few steps when Talent rushes forward and captures my elbow. He turns me around in his arms and guides me back until I collide with the back of the couch. Any trace of patience is erased from his features, replaced with furrowed eyebrows and gritted teeth.

  “What are you going to tell them, Cara?” He emphasizes my professional name. The implication hits harder than if he’d called me a whore because Cara implies that I have something to lose, too. If I call the cops to have him removed from my apartment, my face will end up on the newspaper right beside his and we both know it.

  A whirlwind of awakening and rage churns inside me as his nearness soaks into my skin, with the realization that any kind of wall I thought I’d put between us was nothing but wishful thinking. I stomp on his shoes with my bare feet and struggle against his hold on my body, but it’s no good. He bulldozed through my boundaries, and I’m helpless.

  “I don’t want to save you,” he says. “I just wanted to eat my fucking dinner.”

  The absurdity of this makes me laugh out loud. “Eat. And then go.”

  Talent captures my wrist with one hand and hooks the other around my waist, pressing into me until the couch shifts forward. I lift onto the tips of my toes, perching on the back of the couch. The man is ruthless and drives himself between my legs, where nothing but a pair of cotton underwear and his pants keep us apart.

  I gasp, and he asks, “Why can’t I stay away from you?”

  Circling my hips against him, I smile seductively and say, “Don’t be so hard on yourself, Ridge. Plenty of men pay good money for my pussy.”

  His nostrils flare and he swallows hard, tightening his grasp until my hand tingles from loss of circulation. It’s semi-sweet pain—a rush and panic all at once. I see it in Talent, too. He knows he’s better than me in every way that counts, and the last thing he should do is trap an escort he never invited into his life in her own apartment. Our bodies call for each other, and it’s left us unrecognizable.

  I’m glad it’s not only me.

  The allure sparks and ignites between us, and I’m dizzy from breathing it in. I give up the fight as my defensive wall turns to ash in the fire. Rebuilding it, if only with him, is impossible. The way blood flows through my veins and warms my skin when I’m with Talent has me feeling more alive than ever, and it’s not a sensation I can forget. It’s as if my heart beats for the first time.

  “Pay for it?” he asks. Talent lowers his lips to my ear, pressing himself totally against me. “You begged me to fuck you last night. You cried for it. Lydia, you fucking pleaded for it.”

  I swell with euphoria, bringing with it a memory from last night previously lost in a whisky haze. Talent offered me a bottle of water, and I offered my body. Over and over.

  He strokes against me and releases my wrist to capture my chin, forcing me to see the hunger in his eyes.

  “You offered your pussy to me for free,” he says between clenched teeth. “Again.”

  Bits and pieces come back to me, and the drunk, ridiculous display embarrasses me, but it’s an emotion overshadowed by the excitement of Talent’s hard cock against my warmest spot. He hitches my leg around his waist and thrusts against me, raking his hand into my hair to pull my head back. I cry out as he sinks his teeth into the top of my shoulder before he turns his face into my throat and groans against my flying pulse.

  “I should make you beg for it now,” he says in a husky tone.

  The words nearly leave my lips when he pushes away, leaving me breathless and empty. The signs of life I felt in his arms are sucked away like a vacuum in his absence, and I’m left an empty vessel, free to build my wall of protection again. But it can’t be done.

  Out of breath like me, Talent stands back and straightens his hoodie. My feet touch the carpet, but I can’t move away from the couch in fear of falling … or begging.

  “Let’s be clear about one thing, Lydia,” he says, taking a step toward the door. “I don’t have motives, and I didn’t ask you to walk into my life. You did that. I don’t know what this is between us, but now we’ll never know.”

  He opens the door, and if I were going to ask him not to go, this would be my chance. If only I could get my voice to work.

  Before he leaves, he turns to me and says, “The only thing you need to be saved from is yourself.”

  “Good morning, vita mia. How are we feeling today?” Inez stands at my front door dressed in a white suit, creased sharply down each leg and paired with a nude heel. A string of diamonds hangs from around her wrist, and she’s wearing rings on every finger like a true queen.

  She didn’t dress up for me. Inez hopes Talent stayed the night and it shows. There’s nothing she’d love more than an opportunity to pick his brain once more.

  “Better,” I answer sharply, unconcerned with the hundreds of thousands of dollars in jewelry icing Inez’s hand. I focus on the sandy-haired girl behind her. “This can’t wait until I’m done with my day?”

  “Should we have this conversation at the door, or do you want to invite us in?” Inez asks.

  It’s a non-question, and I step out of the way to allow them inside. Inez Ricci doesn’t enter a room and turn her head for anyone, but I see her eyes darting around in search of Talent. What she finds is our untouched dinner on the counter and an empty carton Dog had his way with on the kitchen floor. If she’s disappointed that I’m home alone, she keeps it to herself. I’m grateful for the small blessing.

  Camilla follows Inez inside with a suitcase in one hand and a small cardboard box in her other arm. She’s polite, sure to make sweeping eye contact with me as she enters. She whispers, “Thank you.”

  Manners are nice, but if she’s going to make it as an escort, she better toughen the fuck up fast. Not only will her clients have their way with her, but the other girls at Hush will eat her alive. There’s zero tolerance for a weak link when so much money is to be made. Backbones are a must, even among each other.

  “Your room is the first on the right.” Inez directs Camilla toward the small hallway. “Get unpacked while I have a private word with Cara. We’ll come for you when we’re ready to talk.”

  Once the girl is in her bedroom, I go into the kitchen to clean up. “How long is she staying?”

  The takeout boxes are soft from being left out overnight to absorb condensation and grease. Inez scrunches her nose in disgust as I drop them into the garbage on top of the burner phone I snapped in half and tossed away after I woke up. Unless Talent calls Inez, he absolutely has no way to get in contact with me.

  I doubt he’ll show up at my door again.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about the friendship you
sparked with Talent Ridge, Lydia?” she asks. “It would have saved me a lot of worry.”

  I close the garbage lid and meet her eyes. “He’s not my friend, and I won’t see him again.”

  She glances at the rings on her fingers, knowing now she brought them out of their cases for nothing. How she could ever believe that I’d let him stay the night here when I knew she was dropping Camilla off sometime today is beyond me. Not that Talent staying over was ever on the table.

  “Should I be worried about the amount of information you keep from me?”

  Her concern softens me around the edges, and I shake my head. “No. Nothing has changed.”

  “I count on you for a lot, Lydia. If we don’t trust each other, the consequences will be disastrous.”

  “I’d tell you if Talent was interested in pursuing a working relationship with me, Inez. That’s not what you saw last night. If Ridge & Sons is an avenue you’re still interested in perusing, send another girl because I don’t want to see him again. You may have better luck with the brother, though. Talent’s a dead end.”

  She shakes her head. “That’s a topic we can revisit in the future. Right now, my concern isn’t with Ridge or his sons, but I am worried about you. Before I leave Camilla in your hands, I need to be sure we’re on the same page. That we’re on the same team.”

  Am I still on the same page as Inez? No doubt something in me shifted after crossing paths with Talent, but my life isn’t on a different course because of it. I wonder about the prospects of a life outside escorting more than I did before, but I’ll fall back in line with time.

  “How long will she be here?” Inez doesn’t need her anxiety eased with words. She likes to see action, and if she insists on dropping Camilla into my lap, I may as well take advantage of the situation and prove my reliability.

  Camilla will be the best slut in town once I’m done with her.

  “Until she’s ready to be on her own,” Inez answers.

  Inez summons Camilla from her room. She appears straightaway, as if she were waiting to be called. Dog’s hot on her heels, curious with the stranger in our home, and I feel betrayed by his brazen show of disloyalty to me. I saved him from a life on the streets, and the new girl already distracts him. Typical male.

  My new roommate’s taller than I remember from the handful of times I saw her behind the reception desk at Hush. She’s too thin, has bad posture, and she needs to lose the timid glow in her eyes. Innocence is one thing, but men need to feel desired right away—they can’t be bothered to coax her out of her shell.

  “How old are you, Camilla?” I ask.

  “Twenty,” she replies.

  She’s not as young as I was the first time I sold my body. I wasn’t shown another way of surviving before I relinquished my virtue for thirty bucks and a hot meal. Had someone intervened and warned me of the permanent repercussions and lingering trauma, I may have chosen differently. This life isn’t for the fragile, and she deserves a chance to run.

  “Did you graduate from high school?”

  “Yes, not long after my eighteenth birthday. Homeschool. I never attended public school.” For a fleeting moment, resentment darkens the shy lightness in her eyes, and it’s a look I recognize in myself. She’s hiding behind her timid exterior, and the lack of interaction at school may be the reason for her awkwardness. This is why she’s eager to break bad. “I left home shortly after.”

  “Where’s home?” I ask, crossing my arms over my chest. “And why did you leave?”

  Camilla straightens her posture and stands firm, jutting her chin out. It’s a shallow show of bravery, but it’s what I was looking for to know she has the balls to endure a life on the underbelly of society.

  “Claremont, North Carolina.” She flickers between defiance and dread like a light bulb about to burn out. “There was no choice. I would have died had I not left.”

  She’s dramatic, but I believe there’s grit behind her coy exterior. Inez and I share a look and a wordless exchange, and it’s clear we’re on the exact same page. Camilla’s the real deal, but she has a lot to learn if she wants to keep up with the likes of us. I hope she has it in her. Otherwise, what wasn’t ruined by her home life will be obliterated by putting a price tag on her body.

  With nothing left to say, I excuse myself and pass between Camilla and Inez to my room to prepare for today’s appointment.

  “Don’t worry, Cara. I’ll let myself out,” Inez calls after me in an amused tone. In a lower voice for Camilla’s sake, she says, “I swear, that girl will be the end of me. Listen to everything she says.”

  I’ve just started to run my bathwater when I hear faint scratching on the door, but it grows louder the longer I take to answer. He deserves to slum it with the new girl for a while.

  “Filthy traitor,” I say as he rushes in and runs circles around my feet. His bald spots are filling in, and his rib bones aren’t as noticeable as they were before this little bastard domesticated himself in my home. He does a good job of being close but not in my way, and I don’t mind when he jumps in bed with me at night; he’s a perfect personal heater.

  I scratch behind his ear and say, “Don’t forget who gave you this life, Dog.”

  Inez may have tipped Camilla off and warned her to keep her distance, or maybe she can take a hint, but she doesn’t bother me while I’m in my room. The door is kept closed, and I don’t hear a peep from the other side. If this arrangement is going to work, she’ll need to make herself scarce and respect my boundaries. We’re not roommates in the conventional sense, and I’d like to make our time together as brief as possible.

  If only Talent had caught on as quickly as Dog and Camilla, maybe…

  No, Talent isn’t good for me. To consider a life where we share a future is out of this world and can only bring harm. But I find myself thinking about him as I sit in front of my vanity, smoothing my hair into a high ponytail. It’s best we sever ties before we dig ourselves in too deep.

  Taming an escort, and nailing a coveted heir sounds like a good time. But it’ll only end in disappointment. Reality would hit us fast, and once the novelty wore off, the truth about how different we are would rip us apart.

  Another example of what-not-to-do I picked up from Cricket’s tumultuous relationships. This has everything to do with the circle of dirtbags she rolled with, who spent more time beating and demoralizing her than actually giving a shit about her wellbeing. She repeatedly gave affection to men who smelled like cheap beer and sweat. The first two weeks were always a hurricane of belligerence and lust, where she dreamed about a wedding and often moved us in with a man she barely knew.

  “Can you at least attempt to be nice to him, Lydia? Marty’s done a lot for us.” Cricket’s ponytail had come loose, and she wore a white-striped tank top without a bra. We’d recently moved in with her newest boyfriend, and they’d still been in the honeymoon stage. “He wants a relationship with you, baby. It will mean the world to me if you’d give him a chance. Marty might actually be the one.”

  Marty was an overweight alcoholic, thirty years older than Cricket, and he had a wandering eye for his girlfriend’s fourteen-year-old daughter. It gave me the creeps, and I pushed my dresser in front of the door at night because I didn’t trust the way he always found an excuse to rub my shoulders or squeeze my knee when my mom wasn’t looking.

  “Think about it, you can finally have a father.”

  She stayed with Marty longer than the others. As much as I didn’t care for the man, I had my own bed to sleep in and the bathroom we shared had decent water pressure. When we had a steady place to live, I was able to figure out the bus schedule and make it to school more often. Once I accepted that Cricket chose the same type of man over and over, I normalized the daily bouts of overdrinking and screaming. The alternative was spending the night in the Buick until she found a different “Marty” and then it started all over again. What was the point of asking her to choose better?

  Marty had been a lon
g-haul truck driver, but his time on the road lessened the longer we stayed. He went from flashing stacks of cash to impress us, to never leaving the house at all. His constant presence was as unnerving as his unwanted touches and lingering stares. On the nights when my mom worked late at the club, I went with her not to be home alone with Marty.

  “Why don’t you stay home and make me dinner, sweetheart?” He’d stand in my doorway with a can of beer hanging from his fingertips, red and clammy from high blood pressure.

  “Make your own fucking dinner, Marty,” I’d say, shoving my way past him.

  I never told my mom how uncomfortable her boyfriend made me feel. He had such a hold on her, I didn’t feel like it would be enough to make her leave. I endured by avoiding the house whenever I could and keeping a knife under my pillow in case he broke through the dresser I still kept in front of the bedroom door. When their relationship started to worsen, she blamed a lot of it on my refusal to treat Marty like a dad.

  Little did she know he didn’t want to be my dad.

  He wanted to be my daddy.

  Once the money ran out and the heat was shut off, Marty hadn’t worked for months but put all the blame on Cricket. She didn’t work hard enough, long enough.

  “You’re clearly not making the men in that club happy, Cricket, you know what I mean?” he’d yelled at her one night.

  “That’s what you want, Marty? You want me to fuck other men so you can sit on your ass and watch TV all day?”

  Marty didn’t watch TV all day. He watched me.

  By this point, I’d attended school regularly and managed to make a friend who lived in the same part of town as us. I don’t remember her name or even what she looked like, but her parents were the same or worse than Cricket and Marty, so we were able to run the streets unsupervised.

  One night we wanted to catch a horror flick at the dollar movie theater. Normally, some perverted twenty-something year old who cleaned the theater after every showing opened the back door for us if we flashed our tits. He wasn’t working this night, and the club my mom danced at wasn’t far, so we walked over to steal cash from Cricket’s purse.