by B. M. Hardin
Truth be told, I just didn’t like the real her.
I never said a word to her unless it was about business or about one of the clients.
Our conversations were always short and straight to the point.
I wanted it to be clear that I was just her employee…not her friend.
I was strictly there for the money…at least at first I was.
Money was no longer the issue so now I was just there because I was under contract.
I was going to decline, especially since Silas was supposed to be coming over for dinner that evening, and I planned to try to have a much needed conversation with him, but there were a few things that I wanted to talk to Carmen about as well so I informed Tia and Silas of my change of plans and Carmen and I headed out to eat.
Carmen was older, but she was gorgeous.
She had a rocking body too.
She walked, looked and even smelled like money.
And I do mean literally smelled like money.
Just by looking at her you could tell that she enjoyed the finer things in life and you would have to step to her correct if you had the balls to step to her at all.
I was sure that other regular employees had to question just how much money it was that Carmen made being what she portrayed to be for the hotel.
I was surprised that no one had ever questioned it.
Carmen and I entered a five star restaurant and after a quick phone call, she and I were pulled out of the line and taken to a private booth.
“Tell Erick I said thanks,” she said to the waiter and made herself comfortable.
It seemed as though she knew everyone, everywhere, and it made me wonder just how much power she truly had.
But I wasn’t intimidated by her.
Nor was I inspired or in awe of her.
To be honest, I felt kind of sorry for her.
To date, in over two years, I’d never seen her with a man or even heard her mention one for that matter.
As stated, she didn’t have kids so basically other than her business at the hotel, she was all alone.
No matter how much money, power, connections or whatever it was that she had, at the end of the day she was all alone.
None of the things that she had were even worth having if you had to be lonely behind them but I couldn’t help but think that maybe she preferred things that way.
Yeah, I’m sure she did.
“Carmen can I ask you a question?”
She didn’t say anything, but her eye contact invited me to proceed.
“Why are you single?”
She looked at me as though I’d asked her for the combination to a safe.
I could tell that she didn’t want to share the information, but she decided to anyway.
Maybe it was something that she wanted to get off of her chest or maybe she just wanted to hear my response to whatever it was that she was about to say.
“It’s better this way. At least that’s what I tell myself. But I wasn’t always alone. I had someone that I really loved, once, a long time ago. But he left me for someone else and to be truthful, I don’t think I’ve ever truly gotten over the betrayal. So, I don’t get in relationships. I get what I need from a man, sexually that is, and send him on his merry little way,” Carmen explained.
It was hard for me to even picture Carmen in love.
She was just so nonchalant and bossy.
Basically, she was a bitch.
She was so difficult to deal with and I couldn’t imagine how it must have been for the man who once loved her back.
To be honest, I could see why he would leave her.
Once the waiter returned and took our orders, I opened my mouth to ask her another question.
This one was about me.
The incident at my home the day after Christmas was one that could never, ever happen again.
“Remember when I started, I specifically told you that I couldn’t sleep with any married men,” I said just shy of a whisper.
“And I’ve kept my word. Or at least I have tried to,” Carmen admitted it.
What the hell did she mean she tried to?
“Look, I told you I wouldn’t knowingly set you up with a married man, and I haven’t. But we both know that the clients lie about who they really are. There is just some information that is above my pay rate if you know what I mean. Seriously, we have one client that calls himself “Tuscan Sun” and we both know damn well that his mama didn’t name him that. But as long as they have the funds, I do my part by making sure they get what they ordered and the people above me do theirs,” Carmen faked a smile as the waiter placed our drinks on the table.
So, basically, every man that I’d ever laid down with could possibly, or in reality, actually be married.
So, there was no way to pin point the married ones or which client’s wife was showing up at my house.
I guess that only leaves one option.
We were going to have to move.
But for me, moving was a big problem.
Moving out of my parents’ house just wasn’t in the plan.
I’d planned to raise a family there and grow old in the house, just as my parent’s had.
But I also had the safety of my daughter, sister and my nephew to think about and unless I got lucky and caught the person in the act, I didn’t have any other options.
I guess was just one of those consequences for the decisions that I’d made.
And I was just going to have to deal with it.
***
An infant-sized dick was the worst!
My fake moans seemed to be just a little off but it was only because I couldn’t exactly feel whatever it was that the client was supposed to be doing to me.
He was sweating, pumping and groaning away, and I was finding it difficult to stay focused on pretending.
I found myself moaning while he wasn’t doing anything and I was hoping that he didn’t catch on or sense how extremely bored I was.
It was Valentine’s Day and I was just ready to get home to my Valentines.
Yes, against my better judgement, I was still seeing Silas.
Other than lying about his job and the one time that I’d spotted him at the hotel, he was perfect.
He done everything just right and I’d convinced myself to believe that he was hiding his profession for a reason.
Just like I was.
So, for now, I was simply going to go with the flow and I figured that we would cross that bridge whenever we got to it.
Being used every day only made me want to be wanted and loved, more, and for the time being, Silas was fulfilling that need.
Finally, the client collapsed on the bed behind me and I quickly scooted to the edge of the bed.
He reached a hand full of money in my direction as a tip and although I wasn’t supposed to, I left the room before he did.
I would circle back around and clean up my room before I left.
“Envy?” Carmen said just as I was about to get into the shower.
I looked at her suspiciously.
She came closer to me although I was completely naked.
Her eyes quickly scanned every curve of my body and then she smiled at me.
“Do you have any plans tonight?” she asked.
“Um, yes I do actually. I have a date,” I said to her.
I wrapped the towel around my body when I noticed that she couldn’t keep her eyes off of my assets.
“Really? I didn’t know that you were dating,” she said.
Of course she didn’t know because I didn’t tell her.
It was none of her business.
“Well, it’s nothing to broadcast,” I said to her and she simply nodded and turned her back to me.
What was that all about?
Thinking nothing more about it, I cleaned myself up, cleaned up my room and then I headed home in a hurry.
I arrived home to find that Silas was already there…and so were the police and the
fire department.
In a panic, I ran to Tia who was sitting on the porch.
Silas was holding Horizon.
As soon as she saw me, she stood to her feet.
“What happened?”
“I was sitting in the living room. I saw a car pull up and then a man got out of it. He had on a black jacket and sunglasses. I was about to head to the door but he pulled something from his back pocket. Before I could even blink, he lit the end of the cloth that was soaking inside of the bottle and he slung it through the living room window. My first instinct was to grab it and throw it back out the window, which I did, but not before it set the curtain and carpet on fire and burned my hand.”
I looked down at Tia’s hand.
It was burnt pretty badly.
This was crazy!
Things were really starting to get out of control!
I’d grown up in this house and had been living here for years, and never had anything like this ever happened.
Nothing like this had ever gone on…until I started sleeping with the men at the hotel.
We had guidelines.
What happened there was supposed to stay there, but it was obvious that someone hadn’t followed the rules, and now my whole family was in danger.
Somebody was more than upset about something and at this point they were really trying to hurt me, and the ones that I loved.
If I didn’t do something, soon, someone was going to end up hurt, or even dead, and it was going to be all because of me.
Silas forced me to tell the police the story that I’d told him the day after Christmas, when our cars had been vandalized.
Tia avoided eye contact.
She knew that the story was bogus and she knew that I was lying.
But she didn’t say a word.
They prepared to take her away in the ambulance and as Silas continued talking to the police.
I stepped away to make a phone call.
If the hotel and the things that I did inside that hotel room was the cause of this, I had to eliminate the problem.
Contract or not, I couldn’t risk the lives of my family any more than I already had.
“Yes Envy,” Carmen said as though she didn’t feel like being bothered.
“Carmen, look, for a while now I have been being harassed by one of the clients mates or wife or something. I’m not sure who it is but it has to be related to the hotel and one of the men that I’ve been with. I’m assuming one of my regulars. I don’t know how, but they found out where I lived. They have been leaving notes stabbed to my front door and they even left their wedding rings in my mailbox. They’ve vandalized my car and I came home today to find that they had tried to burn my house down with my sister and my daughter still inside. Things are getting out of hand. My family is in danger,” I said to her.
Carmen was quiet for a while.
“Envy, what are you telling me for? What do you want me to do about it? You already know the rules,” she said.
Really?
I couldn’t stand the way she thought about things!
Could she really be so cruel and cold-hearted that she didn’t care about anyone other than those damn clients of hers?
“Well, do whatever you have to do, but I’m not sleeping with another one of those men. You can have every penny that I have but I can’t do it anymore. This was the last straw,” I said.
Without saying a word, Carmen hung up in my face.
I started to call her back but figured that I needed to join back in on the conversation between Silas and the police.
I took a deep breath and tried to get my mind together.
This was all too much.
I hadn’t told a soul so that meant that someone was breaking the rules and now things were getting out of hand.
Looking at Silas, I started heading towards him but a cop stepped in front of me.
He hung up his phone and then he looked at me.
“Envy Kirkpatrick, you are under the arrest for prostitution and grand larceny,” he said as he started reciting my rights as he placed me in handcuffs.
What in the hell?
Carmen!
*********************************************
Chapter Seven
I rolled my eyes at Carmen as she led a new maid down the hall to a room.
Oh, I hated her with a passion!
Of course she had been the one to have me arrested the day that my house almost burned down.
They put me in handcuffs and in the back of a police car like I was some kind of criminal or something.
I mean they took me to jail, booked me and everything!
All because of one phone call from Carmen.
After about an hour or so, Carmen showed up and wanted to chat.
Basically she told me that either I was going to fulfill the duties of my contract, or I was going to have a very long night.
Still yet, I attempted to explain my situation to her, again, but she didn’t seem to care.
She’d said that a deal was a deal and that I still owed her six more months and she expected just that.
After going back and forth for a while and seeing that everyone who was anyone was in her corner, I was released to her with no bail, paperwork or anything.
Once I was home that night, I lied and told Silas and Tia that I’d been taken in on an old warrant from my younger years but I assured them that everything was fine.
But things were not fine.
Things were a complete mess.
I was stuck being a whore whether I wanted to be or not and it didn’t matter to Carmen whether my family was going to be hurt in the process.
I still didn’t know who was behind the incidents but I was sure that they wouldn’t stop.
My family wasn’t safe and to top everything off I had to walk around lying about it all.
I was completely stressed out.
I was a fool to think that a whole year of opening up my legs to strangers wouldn’t come with any problems.
I was angry for thinking that everything would remain a secret and that no one would ever find out what it was that I was doing on the thirteenth floor.
I guess that goes to show that some secrets are only as quiet as they were kept and someone was doing a whole lot of talking.
And from the looks of it, I’d been the topic of discussion.
My only choice now was to actually move my family somewhere safe and put my parents’ house up for rent until things died down.
Shaking away my thoughts, I finished getting myself together for a client and when Carmen appeared, without a word, I rolled my eyes headed to my room.
Upon entering the room, immediately I wanted to burst into tears at the sight of the naked man, standing on the hotel bed, wearing only a cape and a cowboy hat but I knew that there was no time and no need to shed any tears.
It was clearer to me at that moment than it’d ever been before.
Without a shout of a doubt…I’d made the wrong choice.
***
I woke up to the satisfaction of Silas’s tongue.
He could lick the split, like nobody’s business.
Of course some of the men at the hotel liked to go down on me, but I never actually paid attention to what they were doing down there.
Usually, my mind was somewhere else and I’d mastered the art of faking it, so they could never really tell the difference.
But with Silas, I was able to enjoy every bit of his tongue and what he was doing to me.
Things between us were still on pretty good terms and he’d been staying with us since the fire incident.
He’d said that he wasn’t leaving until we moved.
I definitely felt safer with him around and I was sure that Tia felt the same way.
Trying to save herself and my daughter from a house fire, Tia pretty much burnt her right hand to the point of where it was useless.
She could still move it, but it was burned pretty badly.
> She could no longer write with it so she was in the process of learning how to write with her left hand.
I felt so sorry for her.
I also felt guilty because I knew that it was all my fault.
But never, not even once, did she blame me.
She never really said anything about the incident at all or about the lie that I’d told the police about Keymar’s other child’s mother.
She was just happy that she’d seen it coming and that she had been able to save them and our parents’ house as best as she could.
There hadn’t been a whole lot of damage done to the house and the house insurance had covered it all and had already taken care of the damages.
All we had to do now was move.
“Envy, I love you,” Silas said, interrupting my thoughts.
Though we showed it, neither of us had ever said the words.
Hearing him say them for the first time gave me butterflies.
I hadn’t had a man say those words to me in such a long time and to be honest, it was like music to my ears.
It felt good.
It felt real good.
“I love you too,” I said in a low voice and then tugged at his shoulders.
He understood what I wanted him to do and abruptly he stopped licking to position himself directly on top of me.
He stared into my eyes and I couldn’t help but smile.
Though I was aware that there were some things that I didn’t know about him, I was sure of the things that he showed me each and every day.
I was sure that he loved me.
I was sure that he cared about me.
I was sure that he wanted the best for me.
He showed it and I felt it in everything that he did and with everything that he said.
So what if he had a few secrets, I had enough of my own.
As long as they weren’t causing me any harm, I guess whatever it was really didn’t matter.
Still smiling at him, strangely I started to think about my Daddy.
I was such a Daddy’s girl.
Sure, I loved my Mama with all of my heart, but Daddy was my knight in shining armor.
I was his first child, so our bond was always pretty strong.
I would always stay up to wait for him when he would come home from being away in the service.
He would always assure me that he would go through hell and high waters to make sure that he made his way back home to me.