by April Lust
Xander nodded and took another long drink. “You’re just, you’re good at it. That’s why I asked. Wondered if you had much practice doing this kind of thing.”
Olivia smiled again, feeling warm inside. “Well. Thank you. I appreciate that. You weren’t so bad yourself.”
He drained the rest of his drink and set the empty bottle on the ground. “So I take it you’re up for more? Not now, maybe, because my legs are fucking tired, but tomorrow? You up for it?”
She stared down at her lap. “I—I don’t know.”
“Why?” There was an edge of irritation to his voice.
Olivia wondered if she wounded his pride. “It’s just— I’m here to work, you know?” Olivia said, still not looking up at him. If she saw his face right now, still caught up in the afterglow, she would probably kiss him again and maybe start the whole thing all over, and that was the opposite of what she should be doing. Goddamn, she couldn’t believe she had done this. First, taking a risky job like this, and now fucking her client? Clearly something was going on with her. If she were her own client, she’d be very concerned. But I’m not my own fucking client, and I should get to do what I want, her inner voice argued. “I’m here to do a job,” she repeated, feeling ridiculous talking like this while she was still naked and sweating on the guy’s couch. “I’m not getting paid to fuck you.”
“Yeah,” Xander agreed. “But it can be a nice bonus, if you’re really into it. And you seemed pretty fucking into it.”
Olivia chewed her bottom lip, finding it sensitive from the kissing they’d done earlier. “Yeah, but I’m not going to keep showing up here just to fuck you. You have to cooperate with me on the actual job or I can’t accept your uncle’s money. Simple as that.”
They were silent for a while. Olivia was just about to get up, slip her clothes on, and disappear into the desert to die of embarrassment when Xander finally spoke up.
“Okay. Okay, I’ll answer your stupid questions.”
Olivia smiled so wide her cheeks ached before she reined it in. Be professional, she reminded herself. Professional? You just screwed the guy so hard you both had to suppress your screams. Olivia disregarded her internal argument and got to her feet, fastening her bra and zipping her dress back up.
“Where are you going?” Xander complained, reaching out to grab her ankle.
“We need to do this right. We’ll sit across from each other. There’s a process to these things.”
Xander groaned in annoyance. “Fuck the process. Come here, lay down.”
“Just try it once,” Olivia suggested. “Try it once and if you hate it, we’ll do it on the floor from now on.”
She saw Xander grin, that wildfire look in his eyes again. “So that means we’re gonna make a habit of this, huh?”
Olivia shrugged and shimmied away from him, swinging her hips subtly from side to side. “If you’re a good boy,” she whispered.
“Fuck,” Xander grunted. “Okay. Okay.”
He got up and followed her, and did as instructed when she pointed at the couch. Olivia sat down on the chair, adjusting her skirt so an appropriate amount of leg was showing.
Xander looked at her, tapping his hands on his knees. Anxiety came off him like smoke from a fire. “So?” he prompted. “Shoot.”
“All right,” Olivia agreed. But I’m not going to hold back, she added silently. He let her in, when they were both naked and vulnerable. He showed himself to her. This wasn’t the way she usually did things. She’d never fucked a client before, but maybe there was something to be said for it. She knew things about him now that she could use later. Like the delicious curve of his ass, for instance, she thought.
Olivia straightened her glasses and reached under the chair to retrieve her pen and paper. She sighed once, deep and full, to prepare for the litany of questions she was about to spew. “What do you want? I mean, really, really want, down to your bones? What does your body tell you to do?”
“Jesus,” Xander said.
“Too much?” Olivia asked, trying to read signs of panic on his face, but she couldn’t detect any.
“I just—I just need a second,” Xander said in a low voice. “That okay?”
“Sure. Let me know if you need me to repeat the question.”
There was a moment of silence where Xander just stared at the ground before he finally whispered, “Okay.”
***
What do I want? What do I want? What the fuck do I want?
Xander shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “To be up-front with you, I want to run away from this whole godawful thing. Just get on my bike and go.”
Olivia bit at the bottom of her lip. “The club?” Xander nodded. “So why don’t you?”
Xander stared blankly back at her, totally stumped. He didn’t know why. It wasn’t like he didn’t ask himself the same exact question every single day. “I— You know, it’s my job,” he said. “I got a job to do here. Wanna get paid.”
“And? You make a tremendous amount of money each year. Are you saving up a certain amount before you plan on leaving?” Olivia asked.
It was a good question. Xander had never really thought of it that way before. “Nah, I don’t know. I guess I’ll just know when it’s enough.”
“Interesting,” Olivia said before scrawling a note down on her paper.
“What was that?” Xander demanded.
“What was what?” Olivia responded innocently, her eyes wide behind her glasses.
“I saw you write something down. What was that about? You analyzing me or something?”
“Just keeping track of important notes. I don’t want you to have to keep repeating things to me,” Olivia explained.
“Well, knock it off,” Xander barked. “I’d rather repeat stuff than have you write shit down about me.” What if someone found the notes, someone in the club? He could never show his face around them again. His blood was pumping in his neck, probably making his veins stick out. He felt a flush of embarrassment rise up his chest and darken his cheeks. “Sorry,” he grumbled. “But don’t fucking do that.”
Olivia put her pen down and crumpled the sheet of paper she’d written on up into a ball. “Fine. No notes, then. Can I ask you why you’re so scared of being analyzed?”
“No,” Xander snapped back. “Can I ask you why you pretend like everything’s normal even though we’ve fucked?”
Olivia shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “It’s not the way I do things,” she said in a lowered tone of voice. “Like I said, I’ve never done that.”
“I bet you say that to all the boys,” Xander said jokingly, though he expected her to snap at him.
Instead, Olivia chuckled, her eyes lighting up with joy. She looked gorgeous with light in her face. “Back to the question, though. Why don’t you leave?”
“I will run off, eventually,” Xander said, a tone of argument seeping into his voice. “I will.”
Olivia chewed on her bottom lip again and slipped her glasses off her face, storing them in her auburn hair. “There’s something I’d like to discuss with you, Xander. I keep asking you when you’d like to leave, and you answer in terms of ‘running away.’ As if you were a kid running away from home.”
Xander gritted his teeth for a moment. “And what the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“Running away implies there’s a home to run away from, a place you have responsibility for. It suggests to me that, subconsciously, you feel a sense of obligation to this place that’s greater than what you let on. That you see it as your home. A home is a difficult thing to leave behind, Xander.”
Xander stared at the ground for a minute. “It was just an expression,” he said finally.
“In my line of work, we don’t think anything is ‘just an expression.’ There’s always a meaning lingering behind our words, like ghosts.” Her eyes were focused intently on Xander, making him squirm a little. He had to fight himself to keep still and not betray how uncomfortable she was making him. �
�We can move on if you like.”
“Ghosts, huh,” Xander murmured, rubbing his chin in thought.
“Does that make you think of something? We can talk about whatever you’d like,” Olivia said.
Xander got the sense that she was treating him with kid gloves, letting him think he was leading the conversation. He resisted the powerful urge to get up and walk away. “Nothing. It’s nothing,” Xander said, averting his eyes from Olivia’s still-red face to stare at the back wall of his apartment.
He could see her staring at him in his peripheral vision, but her body language changed, her legs crossing and uncrossing and her shoulders relaxing, like she was switching gears. “Okay, let’s move on—”
Xander cut in before she could finish her sentence. “It’s just. Somebody died a while ago. A year and a half ago. That’s all.” He tried for a casual tone, something to suggest he wasn’t that bothered by it anymore, but he probably failed.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Olivia said, pushing her glasses up farther on her head. He could see her brows were furrowed again. “Who died?”
“Nobody. Nothing. It doesn’t matter,” he said quickly, shooting his gaze back down to the floor.
“If you didn’t want me to ask you about it, why did you bring it up?” Olivia asked.
Xander’s mouth fell open to respond, but no words came to him. Why did I tell her? Why did I do that? It honestly hadn’t felt like a decision. The words had left his mouth like sweat pooling out of his body. It needed to escape. He didn’t have a choice. “I don’t know,” he mumbled in response.
“How did this person die?” Olivia prodded him.
His tongue felt heavy and dry in his mouth, so he swallowed a few times to get the courage to reply. “Shooting that caused a crash. It was complicated.”
Olivia stared at him silently for a long time, probably just over a full minute, but to Xander it stretched on forever. This is what hell feels like, he thought.
When she finally spoke, it felt like an act of mercy. “It was someone close to you? Family?”
“Felt like family,” he replied, nervously picking at his knees. “She was my family.”
“She? Your girlfriend?” Xander didn’t say anything in response, which was its own answer. “What was her name?”
“Marta,” Xander said, and his voice was barely above a whisper. It felt dirty, saying her name now. He felt like he wasn’t allowed to, like he’d abused his privileges when it came to her, and the only fitting punishment would be an inability to talk about her ever again. “Her name was Marta.”
“Did you see it happen, Xander?” Olivia asked.
He nodded. “Yeah. I was...I was right there.”
Olivia clicked and unclicked her pen a few times, and Xander looked up to make sure she wasn’t writing anything down. It seemed more like a nervous tick, like she needed something to fill the silence. “Xander,” Olivia said, her voice soft and low. That tone was probably meant to relax him, but Xander felt himself tense up in anticipation. “Xander, do you blame yourself for what happened to Marta?”
“I don’t— I mean. Maybe,” he stuttered. God, he sounded so stupid. Why the hell wasn’t he more put-together? Does it really only take a roll in the sack to turn him into a useless, scared little boy?
“Do you blame the club?”
Xander shrugged, but he already knew the answer to the question. “I mean, you tell me. If she hadn’t been on drugs we brought into the country, she’d still be alive. If she hadn’t been riding with us when the Kings attacked, she’d be alive. If she hadn’t been on a goddamned bike, she’d be alive. What does that say to you?”
Olivia nodded. “It makes a certain amount of sense. But it sounds like it was the result of her choices, not yours.”
Xander felt anger flare up in his belly. “Are you saying it was her fault?”
Olivia shook her head rapidly. “Of course not, Xander. Of course not. But she chose the life she wanted to live. She must have decided it was worth the danger. She knew the risks.”
He scoffed. “Really? ‘Cause I didn’t.” He cleared his throat. “I never expected it to happen. And I fucking grew up around it. So what does that say?”
Olivia said nothing.
Xander stared down at his feet, looking at the scuff marks on his shoes as he pushed the next sentences out of his mouth, trying to focus on anything other than the pain. “The only life I’ve known took away the life I wanted. So what the fuck am I supposed to do now?”
“Well, you could leave,” Olivia said, as if it was that fucking easy.
Xander had to bite down on his tongue to keep from yelling at her. God, how could she be so ignorant? “You don’t know the life,” he told her, “or you wouldn’t say that.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Olivia said. “But I’d like to know more, if you’d be willing to teach me.” She crossed and uncrossed her legs again, and Xander couldn’t help but stare between her thighs, into that sacred dark corner.
“You seem smart,” Xander said. “Maybe it’s just the glasses, but you come off like a smart lady. If you are, you’ll leave now and never come back. This place is death. It’s got nothing to offer somebody like you.”
Olivia stared at him for a moment. “With all due respect, Xander, you don’t know me. Yet.”
“Likewise,” Xander retorted.
“You’re right. I don’t know you,” Olivia admitted. “But I want to.”
Xander felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, tingling almost painfully. “Listen,” he began, his voice dropping to a gentler tone. “Listen, um, what happened today? I enjoyed it. A lot.”
Olivia smiled, this time looking sweet and shy, almost like a schoolgirl. “Yeah, me too. It was…really hot.”
“Yeah, it was. And, um, I’d like to do it again, you know? As much as possible, honestly, because you got…you got some good stuff going on under those little dresses,” Xander said, feeling a smile start to stretch across his face. Olivia opened her mouth to speak, but he cut her off, feeling his smirk start to melt off as quickly as it had arrived. “But that’s as far as it goes, okay?”
“As far as what goes?” she asked, her face screwed up in confusion.
“This,” Xander said. “You and me. It can’t go beyond fucking, all right?”
Olivia looked away from him, seemingly glancing at the far wall, then the floor, then the window, then the door, before finally meeting his gaze again. “Yes. Of course. That makes sense. Otherwise it could interfere with my objectivity in helping you.”
“I mean, sure. I didn’t mean that, but yeah, whatever,” Xander said in agreement. “I just meant we can’t be boyfriend-girlfriend here, you know? It’s too dangerous.”
Olivia nodded slowly and crossed her legs again, pressing her knees together tightly. “I don’t really do that anyway, the dating thing. This works best for me.”
Xander was tempted to ask her why, pick apart her brain for a change, but he held himself back. “That’s good then,” he said instead, his voice hollow and distant-sounding.
“Good,” Olivia said, getting to her feet. “I have to be getting back. I have an early appointment tomorrow morning, at seven. But I’d like to come back soon and walk through your day with you.”
“Like, me telling you what I do every day?”
Olivia shook her head. “No, I mean me following along with you on your day. It’s important for me to get first-hand experience to help you gain insight into your problems.”
“Um, no, sorry, that’s not going to happen,” Xander said.
“And why is that?”
Goddamn, why is she so fucking stubborn? “Because you’d get in the way. I have a job to do. You’re here to make me better at that job, not worse.”
“I’m here to help you solve your problems. Your uncle may have hired me, but I’m here for you,” Olivia retorted.
“Then fucking listen to me, maybe!” Xander half-yelled, getting up from the couch an
d marching over to the kitchen for another drink. He was way overdue for one.
Olivia followed him, barely keeping a foot of distance between their bodies as they both stomped their way to the kitchen. “Do you want to feel this way? Do you want to feel shitty all the time?”
“What kind of fucking question is that?” Xander said as he grabbed another beer from his fridge.
“An honest one. I really want to know. Do you want to feel this way forever?”
“No!” he full-on shouted before cracking open his beer and draining half of it in one huge gulp. “No, I don’t want to fucking feel this way. Are you happy?”