Dark Cherries

by Eve Bradley

  James scrutinizes me for a few long moments, leaned back in the seat as if he were calculating something extravagantly complicated.

  “Dance for him,” he says simply.

  My breath is coming hard into my lungs, and I’m shaking. Even with the influx of alcohol, James scares the shit out of me. I can pretend and I can play, but I feel like he can see right through me and my façade.

  “Now,” he says, and this time it feels like a command.

  Would a normal girl ignore him? Was I trained through years of brutal treatment to respond to an order like this? This word inspires a terrible sensation inside me, and I look back at Shawn. He doesn’t seem to have heard, because as close as he is, the music is loud, and watching a person’s mouth is half of deciphering what they’ve said.

  Fuck it. I won’t be afraid of him. He’s nothing to me, just like everyone here. Shawn, Rhett, and Alexi are all nothing to me. If this stupid-ass cunt wants me to dance to get his jollies off, I’ll do it. I’ll be ten-thousand dollars heavier for it.

  Swiftly, I maneuver myself up onto the tabletop. Everyone is shocked, and I hear yelps of excitement and others of surprise.

  The heels don’t give me a good balance. I move my feet shoulder-width apart. Shawn looks up at me confusedly and frowns. I dip down into a crouch, making sure to move my ass in a slow sexual wave. Just like the girls in the videos, right Emily? It’s the first time I’ve thought of my sister in a long time. But as I’m starting to do an excruciatingly solo dance atop the table with twenty-plus eyes on me, I latch onto the only thing that keep my dignity in place, and that’s doing well.

  “Didn’t you order a dance?” I ask him sarcastically and then run my hands over my body and throw my hair around, teasing him with my bronze locks.

  There are a few more whoops of encouragement as I move, standing and bending, rippling my hips up and down. I touch my face, my lips, and come near to my breasts. I’m alive with the thrill of it, but then Shawn reaches a hand out to touch my ankle. His eyes are darker than I’ve seen them before, filled with raw hunger. I crouch down again and when he sees that he has my attention, he pulls me by my wrists towards him, and I tumble down into the seat on top of him. Remove

  Oh god, I’m straddling him. I remind myself that this is all a show, and I keep up my performance, my lips parted softly as if I’m madly in love with him and then I toss my hair over my shoulder and move my hips in a playful grind. It’s like I’m living some weird fantasy I never knew I had and I enjoy the way he’s sitting there, acting like he’s completely entranced by my movements.

  “Kiss!” the table chants. “Kiss!”

  I can’t contain my laughter. I smother myself in the sweet cologne of his shoulder, and I ease myself down flush with his lap. There’s a very non-pretend hard-on waiting for me, and this causes my laughter to wrack my entire body. I curl my hands around his upper arms as tears stream out of my eyes. The table is still yelling at us. I can imagine Emily would be laughing and goading me on too.

  “Penny,” he growls, and jerks my chin up so that I am forced to look into his eyes.

  By the force he’s used, I determine that he’s both angry and turned on, and his admonishment sends icicles through my stomach. I lose my smile, enthralled by the sensual bow of his mouth. Be rough with me asshole. Pain doesn’t scare me.

  We stare one another down for a few seconds more before he leans in and plants a chaste kiss upon my lips. Although the touch is soft and not anywhere near what I imagine kissing Shawn Van Doren to be like, the group of dangerous men and their ladies holler. My mouth is left tingling, and my entire body is invigorated like I’ve never felt before.

  I hurry to move myself off of him, adjusting my dress to be sure I’m fully contained.

  “Well, if you don’t want more my friend, something is wrong with you,” James chortles and throws his arm around me. “I know I’m ready.”

  His arm is heavy and I try to scoot closer to Shawn, but his arm tightens The hoots and hollers die out, and I’m stuck awkwardly close to the man.

  “Come on, sweetie,” he hisses in my ear. “I’m ready right now.”

  All of a sudden, his hand is at the back of my head and he’s pushing my face down towards his crotch. I fight against his hand, trying to back away, but he’s laughing and pushing me down.

  “James,” Shawn barks at the man and I feel the pressure lessen.

  There’re a few horrible seconds where the man is deciding what to do and if he wants to humiliate me further, but at last, he releases me. I jerk back quickly towards Shawn, but when I’m allowed up, I realize that Shawn, Rhett, Alexi, and a few other nameless men are standing.

  Fear freezes me. It’s slippery like a fish, cold like death, and it buries itself right under my breastbone like a sickness. It’s the same feeling that makes me nauseous and sends chills through to my bones. It’s this feeling that courses through me as I see Shawn’s men on alert, and then, when nothing is said, I see James and Daniel’s lackeys stand too.

  “Do we have a problem?” James asks.

  He’s the only one still seated.

  “I don’t know, do we Mr. Young?” Shawn asks him with a voice of stone.

  “I was under the impression that this meeting was to secure a joint affair,” James says, standing slowly as if he has all the time in the world. “It would seem that your loyalties have become compromised.”

  “I assure you,” Shawn steps past me to be closer to James. His men tense, but Shawn doesn’t mind. “Nothing has changed.”

  “It would be a shame if they’d changed. You know what would happen if things fell through,” James rumbles, tone quietly grave.

  Behind him, one of the men lifts his jacket casually to offer us all a flash of a shiny black gun. Adrenaline spikes in my chest and I let out a gasp as I try to constrict my lungs and hold back the panic saturating me.

  They’re quiet and I’m left starting at Shawn’s back. Shawn is undeterred and whispers something to the man. It takes a minute for them to converse and come to some form of understanding. My legs are quaking, and my head throbs with a splitting headache.

  “The deal remains,” James draws back and gives a reassuring smirk and hand signal that tells his men to relax. He lifts his drink to me as if we’re cheers-ing over something and my breath catches in my throat.

  Shawn grabs my arm and he drags me out of the booth and away from the Young brothers. I have a creeping feeling that both James and Daniel are watching us leave, and it haunts me to my core. Rhett stays there, but Alexi joins us as we calmly head for the exit.

  “Well,” Shawn sneers in my ear. “I’d call that a success.”

  Five

  Secrets that Kill

  I can’t remember exactly when I woke up, but it feels like I’ve been staring into darkness for a very long time. The room itself is oppressively dark, and I force myself to twist to a seated position. I can tell that I’ve been covered by blankets. My back and hips don’t hurt like they had only two nights ago when I’d slept on the pavement, but my head still feels heavy and waterlogged.

  “Rise and shine.”

  The voice is so sudden and obtrusive that I jolt, but before I can get out from beneath the thick covers, the room is illuminated. It’s startling to see Alexi there in nothing but a white polo and jeans. His biceps are enormous, which makes his waist look all the more trim, and the shirt crinkles loosely over the curve of his abs. He walks away from the switch and wanders towards the coffee station.

  It takes me a minute to realize that I’m not in Shawn’s home. This room screams luxe hotel and I can only guess this is Shawn’s doing.

  “Feeling better yet?” Alexi asks me in his roguish Russian accent.

  “What happened?” I rub my eyes and scalp as I assess the room. It’s more like a small apartment. The décor falls into a red and black theme, and the shapes that accompany are found in the details. Some square mirrors and rugs complement its modern style like nothing
I’ve seen before. It almost reminds me of something you’d see from the sixties, yet I’m sure if I said that Shawn would have a fit. Everything was probably excessively expensive and designed for modern schematics.

  “You passed out in the limo,” he divulges and my stomach sinks lower in my belly.

  “What?” I try to stand, and my head sloshes as if it’s made of alcoholic sludge.

  He shrugs and gathers two mugs from the cabinet. He looks over his shoulder with a blithe, crooked grin. “It doesn’t matter. You’re fine now.”

  “Why did Shawn bring me here and not back to his house?” I ask, gathering the blankets up and holding onto them as if they’ll bring me some sort of safety.

  “He thought it would be easier to keep you here.”

  “Keep me here? What do you mean?” My mind goes wild. No one keeps me anywhere. Especially not these fools with their dangerous plans that entail men with guns and fake identities. Because, as I recall, that is exactly what I had been doing last night. I had been pretending to be a specific person-- someone that Shawn needed me to be. A person that fell into this intricately webbed plan of his.

  “It’s a complicated matter.”

  He gathers the mugs in his hands and brings one to me. “I was told you like coffee.”

  Unconsciously, my brow raises. Does he dare tempt me in my fragile state? I cannot fight myself, and I accept the warm rejuvenating brew. Alexi sighs as his body slouches into the mattress in front of me; one muscly-curve.

  “What is so complicated?” I slice my question at him, irritated by the nerves bundling in my stomach. “Why am I here? What happened last night?”

  Alexi’s plush lips move into a frown that shows his reluctance to speak of it. He runs a hand over his sleek short model hair.

  “I can’t tell you everything, but what you do need to know right now is that we’re keeping you here for your own safety,” he says it so casually in that pretty little accent of his. “You’ll be compensated for the inconvenience, of course.”

  “You’re joking,” I plead, hating that I know that he’s not and that this is like some nightmare in which I’m fated to exist and never escape from. “What did those men want from Shawn? From m-Penny? Who even is Penny?”

  Alexi seems utterly undisturbed by my urgency and shrugs.

  “Girl, if I told you that…you’d be more scared than you already are,” he says, and this gives me the energy I need to stand. Alexi’s eyes pan over me and I want to smack him for looking at me so openly.

  “Try me,” I seethe.

  I’m still wearing my tiny red dress and I desperately want something comfortable to wear. I’m not used to this uncomfortable getup. One night. One night is all they asked. I shouldn’t be here. I should be left to my own plans with the money that I earned.

  “Shawn’s the one you can harass with your questions,” he twists his head to look me in the eyes, a coldness creeping over his face. “I’m not the one. All I’m here to do…pretty girl, is give you what we owe you and make sure you stay put.”

  “Stay put? You’re really doing this? You’re really going to keep me captive in a hotel room?” I say it with wild inflection as if I can’t believe that this is actually happening. I’m so shocked that I can barely believe that this is a real situation. How? How has this happened to me? Maybe I was just born with shitty luck. From the flames of hell in Illinois to now. I knew I would always be running from my fate, a disaster waiting to happen. Maybe now the flames have caught up with me.

  “It won’t be for long.”

  Alexi lazes back and then takes a sip of his coffee. He’s so fucking serene it makes me psycho. Like, I’d kill to erase that smug expression from his handsome face.

  “You can’t make me stay,” I snap and set my coffee aside. I race for the door.

  Alexi bolts from the bed, and somehow, as if by magic, he’s ahead of me. We stand before each other, his face darkly lit with amusement. I don’t even twitch. This is a stare down if I’ve ever seen one. His smooth-cut cheeks and imperious features tower over me, and I frantically calculate my odds. If I run…could I make it to the door? Could I wound him enough to where I could quickly slip out and scream for help?

  So I do it. I vault myself towards him and kick and punch as hard as I can. I go for his throat, his junk, and his eyes. I flop like a fish and he struggles to keep ahold of me. For one invigorating moment, I think I’ll knock him off of me, but his hands find my arms, and he’s holding me down.

  “Ouch! Ow!” I scream.

  Alexi loosens his grip, and his eyes soften. I see the crack in his armor. He doesn’t actually want to hurt me. I race for the door in that sliver of a moment where his fingers release me from his tight grip, but before I can latch my fingers around the knob, he tugs me back and slings me over his shoulder.

  “You’re not going anywhere girl,” he says with a ripple of laughter. He then throws me onto the bed. I bounce on the pillowtop mattress and scramble to sit upright.

  We’re both breathless, and anguish terrorizes me. I can’t be stuck here. This isn’t what I wanted. It gives me anxiety to be locked in any one place, and this triggers my claustrophobia. I look up at him. I fucking hate these bastards.

  “Where’s my money?” I demand swiftly. At least give me this. Please.

  I suddenly have a horrible crackling fear that I won’t make it out of this hotel room alive. Was this their plan all along? Have their fun with me in some sick sadistic way and then murder me when they’re finished? Was I just a toy for them to play with?

  “Will that calm you down?” he questions as if he’s judging to see if this will tempt me to behave. But I don’t want to behave. I want to scream and cry. How dare they do this to me?

  “Well, at least that would be something! Waking up as a prisoner in a hotel room gives the impression that you and Mr. Van Doren aren’t going to follow through on any of your promises.”

  Alexi has his hands hooked on his hips, his fingers digging into the obvious v-lines at his waist. I think back to how my past boyfriend had loved when I traced these and teased him in this way. The memory comes unbidden and I nearly shake my head to whiplash the thought from my mind. I’m in a life or death situation and my random lust response is completely ridiculous.

  “Mr. Van Doren is actually very good at keeping his word. And you’ll find that I am as well.”

  The seriousness commingled with the sensation of his accent in my ears relaxes me a notch. I watch Alexi’s bulky figure move with a refined gait to one of the cupboards. My heart rate spikes when he reveals a black briefcase type bag. Is this really it? Am I really going to have ten-thousand dollars? I don’t think I’ve realized how much I’d been aching for this. I can’t believe it’s actually happening.

  Alexi comes back to the bed and unzips the bag and then upends it. Stacks bound in rubber bands fall in a thick green mountain onto the bed. There are about 200 benjamins staring back at me. It’s a lot more than I thought it would be, and in my grimy homeless girl way, I gather them all up in my arms and begin to count each stack. I can tell real money from fakes and I have to make sure that what I’m getting is the real deal.

  “Since there was a bit of a bump in the plan, Mr. Van Doren thought that doubling the money was the only appropriate response,” he explained.

  Twenty-thousand dollars? My skin tingles and my heart lurches. Relief and fear tangle in my chest and I’m unable to form a real thought. All I can think about is the lump that’s in my throat. Why me? Why do I get to be this lucky? Whatever had happened, whatever the issue, I’m now in possession of twenty-thousand dollars. This reality is like a spear running me through. It’s a wound that brings so much relief to the burning of my homeless, hungry, desolate life that the only response I really can have are the tears gathering and skewing my sight.

  “Why?” I say, my throat waterlogged.

  “Why what? Why shouldn’t he compensate you? Your life is in danger,” he speaks so matter-of-f
actly that I’m nearly sputtering.

  “M-my life’s in danger? I thought everything went well? Shawn said that things went well last night,” I say, wiping the tears from my eyes.

  “Are you crying?” he seems shocked.

  “Yes, so?”

  Alexi comes to sit beside me on the bed. I nearly scoot away from him, but he suddenly seems so much more approachable. The lines of his cold model face have softened, and he leans into me, capturing me in a hug that makes me feel safe and secure. His arms are bubbled with muscle and feel so tender in this moment. His fingers tumble down over my hair as if he were soothing a pet. I cannot escape the desire to let go and relax against his chest. I hear his heartbeat as loudly as if it were my own, and I let the tears fall. I fucking hate crying.

  “I’m sorry. I’m not usually this way,” I comment through an unattractive blubber.

  “Shh. It’s fine, girl. Don’t worry. We’re going to make sure you’re all right.”

  Would they? My heart is slamming in my chest like it just remembered to start working again. I realize how intimate this position is, and the first thing I can think of is to joke.

  “You’re very…large,” I chuckle, wiping the foolish tears away.

  Alexi laughs a little, and as he laughs, he dips his chin down and shuts his eyes. Again, in this free-floating moment, I see innocence and…might I say, cuteness? Without his smile, he looks like a cruel vampire. I enjoy seeing him laugh. He smells like snow, musk, and vanilla, and his scent wraps around me just like his arms, an endless stream of strength and silent loyalty. My fears subside quickly. Maybe they do care. He wouldn’t have given me this money if they weren’t going to follow through.

  “Shawn and Rhett will be here soon,” he clears his throat and withdraws.

  I sweep the stacks of cash back into the bag and zip it back up. I’ll need to just bide my time.

  “Do I have anything to change into? Can I go buy something else to wear? I need sweatpants. Or leggings,” I say as I curb my emotion and remind myself to keep my distance from this man. Maybe they care, but embracing him again is a tempting, all-consuming idea that will eventually turn sour. No matter how good any of it feels.