WIFE FOR A PRICE

by Kathryn Thomas

  But then I start to get angry, because I don’t know who the hell he thinks he is. The audition was going fine. I’d carefully stowed myself away in the back of my mind so that I could dance without thinking about anything but the money. And then he had to walk in, expecting more from me !

  The lady with the clipboard comes in, but this time she doesn’t call out some ludicrous stripper’s name. This time, she calls out: “Miss Dunham. You have somebody outside waiting for you.”

  “What did you do?” Sarah says, looking at me as though I’ve just slapped her across the face. “Did you suck their dicks, or what? Why are you being called out?”

  I ignore her and go to the door, ignoring, too, the way the girls look at me. I’m wearing sweatpants and a hoodie now, looking out of place amidst all the bikini-clad princesses. When I get to Hound, he doesn’t say anything, just gestures for me to follow him. He leads me to a storage/break room, with a couch and a small TV, a few magazines, coffee rings on the table, boxes stacked to the ceiling, and a lock on the door. When we’re sitting on the couch and the sound of the music is pounding dimly through the walls, he talks.

  “I almost went crazy out there,” he says quietly. “Really crazy, Daisy. Unhinged is probably the word for it. If you’d taken off your bra…”

  We’re sitting side by side, so we’re not looking at each other. Or, he’s looking at me and I’m looking at the blank TV not looking at him on purpose. If I look at him, I might have to admit that I like this protective attitude, even though it’s presumptuous, even though he has no claim to me, even though we’re just strangers pretending at real affection—I think, that must be it, must be.

  “You have no right to get angry,” I say. “You ruined my audition.”

  “Ruined your…Daisy, why the hell do you want to be a stripper?”

  “For fuck’s sake, Hound!” I yell, without meaning to. “Who ever said I wanted to be a stripper? Is that really what you think, that I sit around daydreaming about being a stripper? Just think about it for a second and you’ll get your answer.”

  “Money.”

  “Money!” I agree. “That’s all it ever comes down to, and since I didn’t even finish school, I can’t even get a job fucking filing, or, or—typing or anything. Because the second I walk in there, they’re going to laugh at me, laugh right in my face, and demand to know what sort of an excuse of a human being hasn’t even finished school!”

  “I never finished school,” Hound says. “I started work when I was fifteen. I never graduated.”

  “So you understand, then, don’t you? It’s about money.”

  “It’s always been about money for me.” He nods. “Until recently, anyway.”

  “With your online course?”

  “No.”

  I turn to him and see that his lips are twisted. Not a grin, not a scowl, an uncertain in-between look.

  “Since I met you.”

  I roll my eyes, pretending that his words have no effect on me. “Don’t try those lines on me, Hound. I’m not about to melt when you look at me. I’m not that sort of girl.”

  His ice-blue eyes don’t waver. “I wouldn’t want you if you were that sort of girl. Listen, I’m not trying to reason anything out. I’m not trying to make some logical argument. All I’m doing is telling you what my reaction was when I saw you up there. And it was this: If she doesn’t get down, I’m going to hurt somebody.”

  “You’re not my real husband!” I snap, jumping to my feet. “I think you forget that, Hound. You’re not my real husband and I’m not your real wife! I agreed to this fake marriage stuff because I thought you could help Dad, but you can’t help Dad if he’s not here , can you? So why am I wearing these rings? Tell me that!”

  “I think only you can answer that,” he replies. He’s so tall that even sitting he only has to look up a little to stare into my eyes. “Why are you wearing those rings, Daisy?”

  “It’s not because of what you’re trying to imply!”

  “And what am I trying to imply?”

  “That we have some kind of—like some kind of connection. That we’re falling for each other or something! But let me tell you, Hound, I haven’t got time to fall for anyone, especially somebody who thinks he can barge in on my life whenever he wants and think he knows what’s best for me—”

  When he wraps his arms around my waist and pulls me into his lap, I don’t fight him, because my anger isn’t just anger. It’s fueled by passion. And what he’s implying is right. I really do think I’m falling for this giant. He sits me on his lap, his groin, and I feel him grow hard the second my ass cheeks squash against him.

  “You’re mine,” he whispers, breath warm on my face. “Not theirs. Not those bastards. Not them.”

  Then he kisses me.

  I think about wrenching away from him, placing my hand on his chest and pushing away and telling him that he can’t just kiss me and make it all better. But when I put my hand on his chest I’m achingly aware of the bulging muscles, the power of him, and for some reason he feels safe, like home. He doesn’t feel like some man I once had wild sex with in an alleyway. He feels like a man I’ve had sex with many times and want to have sex with many more. I open my mouth, kissing him forcefully, moving my hand from his chest to his face, holding him as we kiss. And he does the same, cradling my face. Before I can summon the strength to jump up, return to the argument, I’m swiveling my hips so that my legs are split over him, grinding against him. For a moment I break off the kiss and look into his face. He’s staring at me seriously, intensely, without any hint of humor. He’s staring at me like he’d kill anybody who ever tried to hurt me.

  “Let’s not speak,” I say. “Let’s just—”

  I kiss him again. Grinding on him, I feel his cock, massive and engorged, struggling to break free of his pants. Both of us are panting through the kiss, the room a song of our combined voices, and both of us are roaming our hands over each other. I move from his face, down his torso, sit up and work my hand in between our groins, massaging his cock. He makes a growling noise and I rub faster, faster. Then all at once this giant has lifted me to my feet and he’s tugging at my clothes. I’m doing the same to him, pulling his shirt over his head, yanking his pants down. When we’re naked, he lays me down with surprising tenderness on the couch, leaning over me, rock-hard, ice-blue eyes watching me closely.

  I reach down and grab his cock, all the while my gaze locked on his, unable to look away. I’m still aware of my anger—I don’t think there’s been a moment since I was a teenager when I wasn’t angry—but it’s dim, faraway. Most of all I’m just aware of the heat emanating from his body. I stroke his cock until he’s bulging so much I can feel the veins pushing against my palm, and then I guide him toward my pussy. My body is humming with anticipation, my sweet spot pulsing as though it’s sending out an urgent signal, my lips tingling, wanting to be brushed against by his cock. I wrap my arms around his back as the tip of his cock pushes firmly against my hole, opening me.

  He’s big, he’s so fucking big. I’ll never get used to that. He thrusts slowly, splitting me open, and then he’s buried deep inside of me. But he doesn’t drill into me now. Neither does he bury his face in me so we don’t have to look at each other. I get the sense that sex is awkward for us both, usually. I know it is for me, when quick flings have been all I’ve known. But now he props himself up so he can look into my eyes, and me into his, and as he pumps his hips, sliding in and out, we watch each other. I watch his face as we make love—and make love is what we’re doing—watch his face and feel as though I know him better with each thrust. The pleasure is burning, captivating, and soon our moaning song is louder than ever. His cock sends the tingling in my lips into overdrive, my sweet spot feeling like it’s gathering all the heat in my body preparing for a final ultimate release.

  I smooth my hands over his back, watch as his eyes stare directly into mine. He loves me. I think he loves me. The thought comes in the midst of the pleasure
like a powerful flashlight cutting through fog. I try and tell myself I’m being silly, but with the gentle rhythm of our passionate lovemaking, it’s difficult.

  My sensitive spot becomes warmer, denser, as though a week’s worth of energy is packed tightly in there, bursting to get free. I dig my nails into his back, lightly, and I see his lips twitch at the corner of his mouth and his eyes go wide for half a moment. A silent conversation, like at the house about the realtor: Come for me, he’s saying, without words.

  I resist the urge to close my eyes as the orgasm releases, a slow, leisurely releasing taking as much pleasure from his face as from his cock, as much from the intimacy as from the mere physical act. Twisting my hips, driving up and down, forcing myself to keep our eyes locked together, I ride him as wave after wave of euphoric pleasure explodes in my lower half, making my legs tremble and my toes curl until they hurt. I writhe here and there, chasing the pleasure as it ebbs, find perfect burst after perfect burst of ecstasy. As I’m nearing the end of the orgasm, Hound pushes into me, deeply, so deep for a second it’s like we’re sharing one body. Then he comes, one loud grunt, eyes locked on my lips, my smiling lips. And he’s smiling, too.

  When we roll away from each other, I can sense it. I’m sure he must be able to as well. Something has changed. That was the most loving sex I’ve ever had, I’ve even come close to. Looking at Hound, I know it’s the same for him.

  “Are you going to take that stripping job?” he asks quietly, as we get dressed.

  If he’d told me not to take it, or if there was any judgment in his voice, my anger would return, flaring with the extra fuel of him ruining a moment beneath it. But the question is curious, his voice too tired for accusation. The sex changed me, I reflect again as I pull my hoodie over my head. I don’t answer, and soon all the girls are out in the lobby, milling around in the after audition party. None of the other girls are dressed.

  Jack Michaels doesn’t look pleased that I am.

  “So, Daisy, did you find it, maybe I should say, fun , but after all, does work have to be fun?”

  He’s tipsy, close to drunk, his eyes scanning the ass of every girl who enters his peripheral vision.

  “No,” I answer honestly. “I didn’t. I’m going to have to refuse the job, Jack.”

  “I haven’t even offered you the job.” He flashes a shaky grin. “So it’s not really in your power to refuse anything, is it?” He shakes his head slowly, sadly. “You try to offer them a chance…”

  Hound, from the other side of the room, smiles secretly at me. I smile back, feeling we’ve crossed a threshold.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Hound

  For the next two months, Daisy and I throw ourselves into this fake marriage game. We visit houses every time she has a day off, sometimes visiting two or three a day, as summer deepens and then begins to wane, as the first hints of autumn make the Texan air just that little bit cooler, that little bit more tolerable.

  “I don’t know if having so many bedrooms is that important,” she says near the beginning, sitting in the jeep, looking sexy and beautiful even in her T-shirt and jeans, sexier and more beautiful than she does in her Shack uniform, in a way. “People get five bedrooms, six bedrooms, and for what? Huge walk-in closets, I guess…” She pauses, her forehead creasing. Her forest-green eyes get this playful look in them, and when she smiles, I can’t help but smile back. “Okay, maybe a walk-in closet would be pretty awesome.”

  Or a library, I think but don’t say. A library with bookshelves stretching to the ceiling, so many books on it that the shelves make squeaking noises when you remove one, each book battered and well-read, a desk on one side of the room with a large wooden chair and a stack of papers. A place where a man can go to think and study without feeling a fool. But I keep it to myself. I haven’t looked at my course website, and I’m dodging my tutor’s calls.

  “What do you want? I mean, all this time, you must’ve had something in mind, right?” She asks this another time, another weekend.

  “Just a place where I can feel…” I cut short, shaking my head.

  “What?” She reaches across and places her hand on my knee. She knows how that makes me less guarded. She must know.

  “I…” Then I tell her, without meaning to. “When I was fifteen years old, a burglar broke into our house and my dad got in his way. My dad wasn’t a weak man, but this burglar was quicker and had a baseball bat, cracked my dad across the head and was about to cave in his skull, it looked like. I was huge, even at fifteen, at least six two, and still growing. So I charged at this man and lifted him over my head and threw him into the wall. Just threw him into that wall and then helped my dad to his feet. Well, after that, my dad was impressed, so he pulled me out of school and put me to work collecting for his business, the same old illegal shit thousands of people are into. So I went to work. I was happy about it, back then. Proud, you know. Felt like a bigshot. And then Mom left, and Dad got himself killed, and Mac took me in, and…” I cut myself off. “None of that matters. The point is this. I just want to live somewhere I don’t have to feel like an attack dog.”

  That conversation terrified me more than any conversation has a right to. Without Daisy even asking me, I offered up the most well-guarded secrets of myself. I tell myself I’ll be more careful from now on, but one night we go to her apartment and lie in her bed and she tells me about how she used to wake up early just so she could watch her mom get ready for work, how she used to love the outfits, and the sense of purpose, and the way her mom would look flustered but in control. When she tells me this, I find myself talking about the one and only time I went up to California to see my mom, uninvited. How I stood at the steps of her stock broker husband’s house, how I rang a bell that echoed through what sounded like a series of caverns, and how when Mom came to the door, she hissed at me to go back to Texas and slammed it in my face. Daisy kisses me, tells me it’s okay. Weakening, both of us. “I never usually talk about this stuff,” she tells me. I tell her usually doesn’t even factor into it for me; I never have, never planned to.

  “When I was nineteen,” she says one evening, talking quietly into the darkness as we both lie in bed, “I went to my dad and I told him I wanted to go back to school. I was scared he was going to say no, but honestly, when he said yes I was even more scared, because that meant I had to try and make it a reality. And I did. I really tried. I looked into online courses and night courses. I even booked a couple. But the day it came time to pay, Dad was at my door, telling me about his good friend and how he’d played a few hands of poker with his good friend and how now his good friend needed the money back. I deleted my account on the online course website. I ignored the calls from the night course place. I paid him. I didn’t look back. At least, I tried not to.”

  “What were you going to do?” I ask her, reaching across the bed and laying my hand on her shoulder.

  “You know? It’s odd. I can’t even remember now.”

  Then there’s Dean, a constant elephant in the room. I know that Daisy is looking for him on her own. I know that she’s paid a private investigator. And I’m still trying to find him through Denton. But more and more, I’m starting to believe that he’s dead. It doesn’t make sense that a man like Dean could just disappear so that experts can’t find him. He isn’t trained military, he isn’t an enforcer or a boss or anything like that, he doesn’t have huge reserves of cash. “He’s lying at the bottom of a pit somewhere, man, but if you wanna keep payin’ me, keep payin’ me.” Denton tells me something similar every time I visit him. At first, I told him to just keep looking. Now, I don’t say anything. I know he’ll keep looking and I know he’ll find nothing. Words aren’t necessary. But I think Daisy believes me when I tell her I haven’t done anything to him. Mac, though…Mac is angrier and more distant every time he calls me in for a meeting. He sends me on more jobs than he used to, sometimes two or three a day. More than once I have to call Daisy and cancel because I barely have time to wa
sh the blood from my hands before going out and getting some more.

  But today none of that matters. Today, we’re looking at another house. For me it’s becoming less and less about the houses—though I still want one and intend to buy one—and more and more about just being with Daisy. The fake marriage charade never truly comes alive until we’re at a house, with the smiling face of the realtor bringing out the performance in Daisy. And it is mostly Daisy who comes alive. I play the role of reserved husband; Daisy brings life to the room.

  The realtor is a heavyset lady with thick purple-framed glasses wearing a body-hugging turquoise dress, walking with surprising skill in six-inch turquoise heels. Her name is Miss Stone and I think it’s pretty fitting. She smiles, laughs, but there’s a fake, lifeless air about her. She leads us around the house with a professional, no-nonsense attitude, perhaps hoping to intimidate us. But I know better than that. If Daisy and I ever go to a house and there’s a problem, Daisy picks it out right away. Sometimes she tells the realtor like she did that first time. Sometimes she just tells me and we go on our way.