by Marni Mann
The anxiousness turned to tears, and they were already leaking out the sides of her eyes.
I had her just where I wanted her.
I got closer to her face, so she could feel the heat coming off my skin. “Really hard? If I’m right, then I want you to nod.”
Again, she did what I’d asked.
My thoughts went to how hard the inside of those cheeks could squeeze around my cock, how much of me she could take in before she gagged, how fast she could swirl her tongue.
They weren’t safe thoughts.
So, I focused on her bruises. They were turning a slight green, which told me they had started to heal. The cuts were all scabbed. Her face was still a mess, but I could picture what she looked like without them.
And I liked it.
Too much.
“Close,” I barked, turning off the flashlight and putting the phone in my pocket.
Within a second, her lips were sealed, and she was tugging the blanket up to her neck. It was too bad. I had really enjoyed the view of those nipples.
“Thank you.” She wiped her face and her eyes, all the tears completely gone now.
“For what?”
She quickly glanced down at my dick. “For not making me do that.”
I laughed at the way she looked at me and for what she had called my cock. In a brothel, we had much better words than that.
“Who says I’m not going to?”
“I-I thought—”
“Stop thinking, Arin. It’s not going to get you anywhere.”
I gazed at the small outline of her body under the covers. It was similar to the girls downstairs, but that wasn’t the size I liked. She needed to gain at least fifteen pounds. Then, once she had more meat on her bones, she’d really look sexy.
If she was here for a few weeks, I’d make sure that happened.
But not for me.
The gain would be for her.
“I have over forty sluts downstairs. If I wanted someone to suck my cock, I wouldn’t have to force them to do it.”
My stare moved to her lips. They were red and suddenly a little swollen. I’d had a chub since she opened her mouth wide for me. Now, it was full-on hard and throbbing.
“There’s nothing sexy about making a woman give me head. I want her to beg for my cock, not fear it.”
“But isn’t that what you’re going to have me do? Sell my mouth? And my body?”
I pulled out my phone as it vibrated in my pocket, reading the text from Lawan, telling me she needed help with someone in the lounge.
“I’ll be back.” I walked to the door, holding the knob between my fingers. “Lawan gave you a phone that has Internet access. Use it and contact whoever you need.”
“Okay. Thank you.”
She needed to stop thanking me. All I’d given her was a place to bathe and a bed to sleep in. If she knew the thoughts that were in my head, she’d be running, not showing me any appreciation.
I shut the door and went down the two flights of stairs, coming up behind Lawan to the backside of her desk. A monitor sat on the glass top, the screen showing a small picture of each of the private rooms. All but one was filled.
“What do you need?” I asked.
“The older man.” She used her head to point to the guy who sat on the far side of the lounge. “He wants you, sir.”
“What does he want?”
“Not sure, sir. He said he wants to talk to the owner.”
“Everything else okay?”
I took a quick glance at the museum. Several of the new girls were in there, and I could tell by the way they positioned their bodies, how they were dressed and put together, that Lawan had trained them well. They were skinny, like my other girls, which was what my clients liked, so I knew they’d all do well here.
“Fine, sir,” Lawan said. “Very profitable evening.”
“Good.” I walked over to the man in the lounge and stood at his side while he sat, facing the museum. “Name’s Huck,” I said, extending my hand. “How can I help you?”
He shook it. “You own this place? You’re a little young for that, aren’t ya?” His accent told me he was American. His boots and cowboy hat made me think he probably lived in one of the Southern states.
“I’m the owner.” I crossed my arms to do something with them. “What can I get you?”
He took his hat off, scratched the baldness on top, and then ran his fingers down his long gray ponytail. “I traveled a long way to get here, and I’d like to spend the night with someone who can take care of my needs. You get me?”
“That’s what we’re all about here.”
“Excellent.” He put his hat back on. “Now, show me a girl you recommend.”
Whenever a client called me over, I was almost always asked that question. That was because it was common for brothel owners to sleep with their girls.
Not me.
I wasn’t like most owners.
In all the years Serviced had been mine, I never fucked any of my employees. I respected what they did to support their families. I just wasn’t interested in sleeping with women who sold their cunts. I never told my clients that. I’d just lie through my response.
“Any of the girls behind that glass can provide a service that you’ll be more than happy with,” I said.
“I’m sure they’re all good at what they do, but my tastes are a little different than what I’m seeing in there.”
That wasn’t the first time I’d heard this; therefore, I had several phone numbers Lawan could call.
“No problem. We can accommodate those needs, too. Why don’t you give me a description of the type of man you’re looking for and my staff will do their best to find someone?”
“Man?” The guy crossed his boot over his thigh and laughed. “I’m not looking for no man.”
“Then, why don’t you tell me what will make you happy?”
He leaned to the side of his chair, the same side I was on, and put his hand next to his mouth to direct his voice at me. “I’m looking for a girl a little younger than the ones you’ve got in there.” His other hand reached toward me, trying to give me the bills that were tucked under his fingers.
“How much younger?”
“Much.”
“I see.” I slid the cash in my pocket.
“I’m not looking for no virgin, but I’m not looking for her to be used up either. I want prepuberty, hairless, someone who knows my cock from my balls, you hear me?”
He handed me another bill. I didn’t bother to see how much it was before I joined it with the others.
“Go find me someone who fits that description. I’ll tip her real well when I’m done.”
My hand went to the man’s shoulder, and I squeezed hard enough to make sure his attention stayed on me. “Let me see who I have in the back.”
As I walked through the lounge, I pointed at the security guard standing at the entrance. With his eyes on me, I turned two of my fingers in a circle, signaling for him to lock the front door, and then gave a second sign that told him to follow me.
“There are four security guards on tonight, right?” I asked the guard in Thai when we reached the hallway.
“Yes, sir.”
“I need you to grab one of them and make sure the other two cover your areas, and then I want you to escort someone outside.”
“The old man from the lounge?” he asked in Thai.
I nodded. “I want to make it clear to that motherfucker that I don’t sell children in here.” I glanced in the old man’s direction, his gray ponytail dangling down his back, as greasy and as goddamn slimy as him. “Actually, when you’re done with him, I don’t want him to be able to even say the word children.”
“What did this one ask for? A boy or a girl?”
“The sick fuck asked for a girl. A hairless one.”
He ground his teeth together. “I’m going to take it further than last time; I’m just warning you.”
I had a feeling
that had something to do with the two daughters he had at home. That was the reason I had picked him and not the guard who was standing by the elevator.
“I hope you do,” I replied in Thai. I reached inside my pocket, pulled out the bills the ponytailed bastard had given me, and counted them. Then, I added some of my own money and handed it to him. “Here’s seventeen thousand baht. You’ll get another seventeen when it’s done. Same deal for the other guard.” It was enough money to cover his rent for at least two months.
“I’d do it for free.”
“I’d never ask you to.”
He clasped his hands in front of his face and bowed.
I returned the gesture with a slap on his shoulder, and I went up the stairs to go to my office. As I passed Arin’s door, I paused.
I had so much fucking work to do, including blacking out the security cameras so that the ponytailed guy would be deleted from all our footage. If his disappearance got traced back here, I wanted to be able to prove that he hadn’t walked through my doors. I also had to scan the live feed to make sure my two other guards were covering all the areas now. I had tips to pay out and new girls to enter into my system, and tomorrow’s deposit needed to be counted.
Yet my goddamn feet wouldn’t move from her door.
Arin
I heard a pair of footsteps coming down the hall. I listened to them get closer to my room until that noise was replaced with a pounding on my door. As I waited for the door to open, I closed the browser where I had been checking out Serviced’s website and set the phone on the nightstand.
“Lawan,” I called out, “is that you?”
When no one answered, I climbed out of bed and cracked the door, gasping when I saw Huck on the other side. He said nothing at the way I had responded. He just continued to look at me with an intensity I felt all the way down in my toes, his fists clenched like they were about to punch something.
I hoped that something wasn’t me.
“Are you okay?” I asked. He said nothing, so I tried a different route and said, “Do you need something?”
“I don’t know.” His mouth stayed open as he breathed through it, his brows scrunched together, anger filling his eyes.
I felt so small as I stood before him, so naked in my white T-shirt and cotton shorts that were large on my frame, but his stare made them feel see-through.
“You don’t know?”
After the way he had treated me earlier, I was afraid of what his answer would be. He’d made it clear he wouldn’t force me to give him a blow job. However, that didn’t mean he wouldn’t force me to give someone else one. I had stupidly agreed to do whatever he asked, and I had no idea how far he would take that. But, by the way he was looking at me, I was definitely nervous.
“I want you to get in bed.”
When he took a step toward me, I took one back and kept on moving until the mattress hit behind my knees. Quickly tucking myself underneath the blanket, I sat so the pillows were between the wall and my shoulder blades.
Huck stood in the middle of my room, his hands still gripped into tight fists. I couldn’t stop staring at them, at the heads of the snakes and their beady pupils. As my gaze eventually shifted upward, he seemed even bigger than the last time he had been in here. He had to be at least a few inches over six feet with hair that wasn’t blond or brown but a mix of the two. His cheeks and chin were covered in scruff. The short beard didn’t appear intentional, more like it was out of laziness. But his eyes weren’t lazy at all; they were extremely focused. On me.
The whole time I’d been in his presence—when he’d carried me up the stairs, placed me on the toilet seat, stared into my mouth—I’d felt the seriousness in his gaze. I’d felt the way he assessed me. I’d felt him on every part of me even though he didn’t touch me.
And, as he flipped on the light, I felt it all again.
He had brought me water. He’d had Lawan offer me soup and crackers and slices of bread that had a strange spread on it, which I’d turned down because my stomach still wasn’t settled from the drugs. Now, he was here for a different reason. A reason I couldn’t wait any longer to hear.
“Tell me what you want from me, Huck.”
Instead of a response, I got more silence. More intensity deep within his eyes.
No one had ever wordlessly looked at me like he was doing. And I had no way of knowing what his stares meant because he was the hardest person to read. I wasn’t sure if he was about to pull out a knife and slice me into thirds or if he was about to say something that would put me at ease. I just knew that I couldn’t take too many more seconds like the ones that had just passed.
“Huck?”
He walked over to the window and glanced down at the street. I heard scooters drive by and voices from the people who were walking near the building. I imagined some of them were talking about the brothel, although I couldn’t understand a word of Thai, so I had no way of knowing.
“You could have gone straight to the police,” he said, our eyes finally connecting, “or the US embassy. But, when Chati gave you my name, you trusted him, and you came here. Why?”
I carefully thought about his question. “I don’t know.”
He breathed through his mouth again. “I don’t believe you.”
When I bent my knees and wrapped my arms around them, my shorts rode up to the tops of my thighs, exposing most of my legs. I should have shimmied them down, but his glare kept me from moving again.
“Well, there’s sort of a reason, but it’s small, and it’ll make you laugh.”
“I don’t do that very often.”
“That’s a shame.”
“Get to the point, Arin.”
“When I was a kid, my mom used to read to me. She wasn’t a good reader. She…” I paused, remembering her face and her hair, both almost identical to mine. And then I recalled the way she had held my cheeks and kissed them before she closed the book and said good night. I missed her. Oh, God, I missed her so much. I shook those thoughts from my head, so I could continue. “My favorite book was The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. She probably read it to me twenty times at least. So, when Chati said your name, I felt this weird sense of comfort, and that’s what led me here.” I squeezed my legs even tighter. “I’d never met anyone named Huck before.”
He didn’t laugh. He didn’t smile either. Not even the tiniest bit of hardness fell from his face. “You live in New York City, right?”
I nodded.
“Then, where does all this innocence come from? Because the New York I’ve read about and seen on TV doesn’t breed women who would go to some stranger’s place, especially not after she was drugged and stuffed into a sack and dumped on a pier. What she would do is run her ass to safety.”
“You’ve kept me safe.”
I didn’t think it was possible, but his stare turned even sharper. And, as it did, I pulled the blanket all the way up to the bottom of my lip.
“What’s funny is that you believe it’s going to stay that way.”
My body didn’t shake this time because there was nothing keeping me in this room. I wasn’t chained to the bed. The door wasn’t locked. If I wanted to leave, I could easily find the stairs and walk down them.
What made no sense was that, if he wanted me to leave so badly, enough that he was threatening my safety, then why didn’t he just kick me out?
I wasn’t going to ask that.
But I would ask something else.
“Is it always this dark here?”
I’d slept through the morning and afternoon light. Still, I wondered what those hours would have shown me, whether our conversations would have gone differently had they happened in daylight.
“In Bangkok, no.” He put his back against the window and leaned into it. “But here, in this brothel, yes.”
He sounded so honest, I felt a chill run through me.
“Why do you stay then?”
He’d warned me not to ask questions, so I knew I was pu
shing my luck.
“Things weren’t always like this. At one time, I could help. I just can’t do that anymore.”
“Help whom?”
He shook his head, almost like he’d been talking to himself and he’d just realized it.
When he didn’t answer, I said, “What changed, Huck?”
He looked away from me and began moving toward the door. He’d reached his limit, but I hadn’t.
“Wait,” I told him, “I’m not done yet.”
“I am.”
I threw off the blanket and rushed toward the door, placing my hand over his as he pulled on the knob.
I almost jumped from the feel of his skin.
The images were only inked on. I knew that. But it felt as though the snake had licked me, and the noise I made sounded like I had enjoyed it.
I did.
Jesus, there was something definitely wrong with me.
I couldn’t remember what I was going to say. His touch made me lose my train of thought. Knowing he’d brush past me within the next few seconds, I had to come up with something. Just a few words, a question, anything that would give me more time with him.
“Don’t make me wait.” It came out as a whisper. “Tell me what you’re going to have me do here. I know I can’t stay for free.”
His other hand rested above the open door, and the movement sent me his smell. It was clean, a little soapy, with a splash of cologne that reminded me of the citrus I used to buy at my favorite fruit stand in the city.
“Do you want to sell your pussy, Arin?”
Pussy.
It wasn’t like anything else he had ever said. That word sounded different, special, like it held value.
“No”—I shook my head—“I really, really don’t.”
His eyes dropped to my nipples, and I knew they were getting harder, pushing even further into my T-shirt.