by Lexie Ray
The lasagna at the restaurant, tucked away in a corner of the city I’d never ventured into, was just as delicious as Xander promised. But the tiramisu was the real coup of the evening. It was delicate, rich, and downright sinful. We got one to share, but ended up ordering a second after experiencing just how delicious the dessert was.
“I’m stuffed,” Xander admitted. “This was just what I needed. This entire day was just what I needed.”
“I’m glad you’ve had fun,” I said, stealing the last bite of the treat from Xander’s fork and plunging it into my mouth before he could protest. “You said you were full.”
“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” he said, grinning. “That’s bad manners.”
“So punish me,” I said casually, washing the last of the dessert down with a sip of water.
“Is that a request?” he asked, raising one dark eyebrow at me.
This was foreign territory for me. Antonio and I had kind of tumbled into bed together. It had happened completely naturally. This kind of thing wasn’t something I had ever negotiated.
“I guess this is the portion of the night when I ask if you’d rather go to your place or mine,” Xander said.
“Your place,” I said, relieved that he’d taken the reins. “Mine is a bit of a mess.”
“Mine is a hotel.”
“Fair enough.”
On the way to the hotel, I realized just how nervous I was. I was really going through with this. I was really going to have sex for money. It would be different if Xander had been anyone else. Instead, he was someone I actually liked. I didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. I wouldn’t be able to keep professional or emotional distance from him. This thing, whatever was going to happen, was going to be for real. I saw it coming, and I accepted that. There were worse things in the world than being attracted to a sexual partner, worse things than getting paid for your work.
“I know that this is a business transaction,” Xander said, glancing at me as we turned into the parking lot for the hotel. It was one of the nicer ones in the city, and I wondered again just what it was he did for a living to be able to afford all of these luxurious things like convertibles and fancy Italian restaurants.
“It is,” I said, my voice small. For some reason, I was shrinking away from this part of the conversation, this business detail. It seemed ugly, even if that was the understanding we’d had between ourselves going into the beginning of the date.
“And I’m going to give you everything in my wallet right now,” he said. “And you deserve more. You’re a good person, Sol. And gorgeous. And … and I really like you.”
I flushed. “I like you, too. And thank you. You’re very kind.”
I followed him through the hotel parking lot after he’d found a suitable spot, stayed behind him as we traversed the marble lobby, wondered if anyone knew what I was and what we were going to be doing.
“Are you nervous?” he asked, grinning as the elevator doors slid shut.
“I guess I am,” I admitted.
“Why would you have any reason to be nervous?” he asked. “I’m the one who should be nervous. I’m nowhere near as hot as you are.”
I laughed. He knew the perfect way to put me at ease. “You are definitely hotter than I am,” I protested.
“Don’t even lie to me,” he laughed. “You’re just trying to squeeze me for more money. You’re already going to take all I have from me.”
The hotel room was just as nice as I thought it would be. Xander flitted around the space, picking up shirts and slacks that had carpeted various surfaces.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’m not much of a housekeeper. Something of a slob, in fact.”
“It doesn’t bother me,” I said. “Need some help?”
“You are absolutely not picking up my dirty socks from the floor right now,” he said, swooping in and retrieving them from the carpet before I could snag them. “You’re embarrassing me.”
“It really isn’t a problem,” I said. “But don’t you ever let the professionals in here to do their work?”
“You mean professionals like you?”
“I mean the fine housekeepers they must employee at this hotel,” I said, putting my hands on my hips.
“I guess I should if I want to keep inviting you over,” he said, dumping the armful of clothes he’d gathered into a drawer in the dresser and forcing it shut. “Would you want to come over more often? You know, if maybe it’s a little bit cleaner in here?”
“It would have to be much cleaner,” I joked, putting my nose in the air. “You would have to let the housekeeping staff in here every day. You would have to do laundry.”
“Anything,” he said. “I’d do anything.”
I tossed my head back to laugh, and when I looked back at him, his mouth was on mine, kissing me breathless, absorbing the need to talk about anything else.
His hands tore at my dress, and it gave in, slipping up over my thighs and rump, over my belly and breasts, over my shoulder and head and onto the floor.
“You’re making a mess,” he said, cupping one of my breasts in his hand. “A beautiful, beautiful mess.”
He helped me step out of my panties, and I pressed myself against his body, still fully clothed. There was something completely erotic about my nudity and his clothing, but I didn’t have the patience to explore it. I wanted him naked. Now.
My fingers scrambled against his belt buckle, clumsily unfastening it, puzzling over the button to his trousers, relieved when they mastered the zipper right away. Zippers were hard to screw up.
He was wearing briefs beneath his pants, an item of men’s clothing I had never thought could be sexy until this very moment. His arousal bulged against the fine fabric, and I shyly ran my fingers over that evidence of his attraction toward me.
“You’re very big,” I whispered, slipping my hand beneath his shirt as he undid the buttons, one by one.
“I’m very good at what I do,” he said. “I won’t hurt you.”
“I didn’t say anything about being worried about that, did I?”
I smirked at the shocked look that crossed his face, then grasped when he seized me tightly, spinning me around so that my rear was pressed directly into that bulge in his underwear. It was so hot that I groaned, squeezing my thighs together, ready for anything, ready for everything.
“I have to tell you something before we do this,” Xander said, his hot breath against my neck, his lips grazing my ear. “You — you should know something.”
“I don’t want to,” I moaned. “I want you. I want you now.”
“I just — I don’t want — oh, fuck it.”
Xander whipped me back around to face him, hoisted me up to his chest and I wrapped my legs around his waist. Off balance, we both tumbled to the bed, bouncing mightily. It would’ve been funny — a situation I normally would’ve giggled at — but all my thoughts and feelings that weren’t directly related to lust and attraction and desire and satisfaction had all drained away, making me basically a giant nerve ending. I arched into his every touch, moaned at each caress, wanted more and more.
I wanted everything this man was willing to give me. I didn’t care about the money anymore. All I cared about was feeling good. Pleasure was my new currency.
He was as good as he’d promised he was, delivering satisfaction with each and every stroke he made. He reached deep places inside of me, made me make sounds that should’ve embarrassed me. I didn’t have room for shame within all of this overwhelming sensation. All I could do was feel and react, throw my head back and shout my elation, my completion.
He joined me almost immediately, pulling out of my body, spreading his seed warmly against my thigh. He gave a long, low groan into my ear, and it was the sexiest thing I’d ever heard. I’d done that to this man. I’d made him feel that delicious pleasure.
Xander stayed on top of me for several moments more before rolling off. We stared at the ceiling, both of us panting,
for what seemed like hours. The echoes of my climax were still pulsing through my body. It had been so intense, so incredible. I closed my eyes, eager to savor every last moment of my pleasure.
When the mattress bounced, I opened them and turned toward him.
“I just finalized my divorce,” Xander said, now facing away from me. “We’d been married for nearly ten years. She was cheating on me with my friend for more than half of it. It was the worst pain I’d ever felt, and I was most angry at myself. Don’t you think I should’ve known something, should’ve suspected? I’m an idiot. And I lost two of my best friends in the process. It sucks to be alone. It’s nice to lay next to someone, even if I am paying you for it.”
I winced at his words, but he didn’t turn. Was that all I was to him? A bill to be paid? Even as I was stung, I realized he’d be hurt that I was just thinking that he was a wallet to be opened.
But did I really feel that about him? Sure, the money was going to help a lot, but we’d had a good day. I’d actually had fun, and we were compatible in more ways than one.
Could I help it that it felt just as good for me to be lying next to someone? Could I tell him that?
“Do you think we can maybe see each other again?” he asked, his words slurred. I wondered when the last time he’d slept was. “Or be friends? Or go on a date? I don’t know what I’m saying.”
“Sleep,” I suggested, rubbing his back. “You’re tired.”
“I’m tired,” he agreed, and within seconds, he gave a gentle snore.
Now was the perfect time to tell him about Antonio, to tell him some truth about my situation. He’d just poured his heart out to me, told me every gory last detail about his wrenching breakup. I could just prod him awake, and let him know what my situation was, just as common decency. He could understand where I was coming from.
If I told him now about Antonio, maybe we’d part on good terms. We could stay friends, too, driving around in that amazing convertible, going on friendly dates, confiding in each other.
Hell, maybe I’d even escort him again, sleep with him for the solace it brought me — and the money — as long as we understood that it couldn’t turn into something with strings, something with feelings deeper than they already were.
Instead, I curled around him and kept my mouth shut, pressed against his smooth shoulder. I didn’t say a word. And as soon as he was good and asleep, I left.
Chapter 5
I dreamed about it still, Honduras. I dreamed about the good and the bad parts, about the mountains and the violence, watching the airplanes execute that hairpin turn to land at the airport in Tegucigalpa, and the gangs that roved the neighborhoods, taking what they wanted.
My mother died giving birth to me — her sole achievement in growing our little family. I never knew her, never knew a mother’s love, but my father did the best that he could. He was killed when I was no more than eleven, gunned down for refusing to pay the “tax” for protection to the gangs. He owned his own small market, and was proud to keep it clean and as well stocked as he could manage. I still have memories of scrubbing at the linoleum floor tiles, working with him in the family business.
I remember the way his blood stood out against those same tiles — so red.
I remember my uncle coming for me, taking me away to his neighborhood, away from the blood and the market and that gang and into an entirely different nightmare. We were poor, always poor, and we couldn’t escape the violence in certain parts of the city. My uncle spoke often of the countryside, getting away from the city, living in the mountains or on the coast, taking charge of a piece of land and making a life of it.
It was easy to talk, and easy to dream. Anything was better than this.
We locked the doors and the windows as the sun went down, my uncle keeping watch through the curtains of the situation on the streets. My aunt would turn the radio on to drown out the sounds of revving motors and frequent gunshots, my cousin and I doing our homework, oblivious, for the most part, to the unrest around us. It had just become part of the soundtrack of our existences.
School was somewhat an escape, to immerse myself in studies, to lose myself in the idea of other places beyond our neighborhood, beyond the city, beyond even Honduras. I could escape into a book or a thought or a lesson and forget about that blood on the tile, forget about the tattoo of gunfire interrupting my slumber.
I wanted to learn more, but the teachers were underpaid, overworked, and the classes were too large. Students ran around largely unchecked, and I found myself getting frustrated at them distracting me from my studies. When class would get too rowdy to handle and the teacher would step out, giving up for the day, I’d decamp to the library, continuing my own education among the tomes I found there.
Amid those shelves and volumes was where I met Antonio.
Like me, he was diligent and passionate about education, touting it as the key to a brighter future.
“So we should give all the gangs books instead of tax money?” I asked him wryly. I’d seen firsthand what happened if you tried to make a stand against the gangs. I’d lost my father to that brand of bravery.
“I’m not an idiot, Sol,” he chided me. “I know there are problems. But education opens doors. Why do boys join the gangs? Why do people go along with what the gangs want?”
“They’re afraid,” I said, shrugging.
“They don’t know any better,” he said. “They think the gangs are as good as it gets, that the brotherhood of it will protect them and provide for them. If we could only get the education we need, we could protect and provide for ourselves.”
“The gangs aren’t going to like that talk,” I said lightly. “You better not let any of the recruiters hear you.”
It was something of a testament to my reality that I could tease Antonio about the gangs. They’d robbed me of the only parent I had left, made me flee to another neighborhood with my father’s brother and his family. But this was Honduras. If you lived your life in constant terror here, you’d never be able to so much as leave your house. You had to flavor everything with a little bit of humor or you wouldn’t be able to survive.
“We need a better police force to root out the gang members,” Antonio said with disgust, shaking his head. “Get them out of the schools.”
“And we need a better government to give us a better police force,” I said, mocking his often-repeated mantra. “And we must eliminate corruption, feed the poor, lift up the weary. Vote for Antonio Lloras! He will right our wrongs.”
“Be sarcastic, if you want,” he huffed. “But if we see the need for change and ignore it, we’re no better than the gangs.”
The gangs were a problem throughout the country, but it was most rampant in the poorest neighborhood. Kids saw it as security, as something to do. They were aggressive about recruiting boys young — to do everything from transporting drugs to acting as enforcers to being hit men. Everywhere you looked — especially if you were looking in the wrong places — you would see little boys carrying rifles nearly as big as they were. It was a horrifying, disgusting thing, but it was something our country seemed helpless about. No one could get rid of the gangs — no more than anyone could get rid of the poverty, or rebuild the country after the hurricane.
Gangs were biggest problem, but they were so prevalent, it was becoming worryingly easy to live with it. Antonio might have been passionate about inspiring change, but that didn’t stop us from making sure we were indoors before dark, shunning certain neighborhoods as best we could, and having to accept the fact that bad things happened.
When nightmares become reality, they become stunningly easy to adapt to. I’d lost my father. I’d seen his body splayed out across the floor of the store he’d been so proud of. And yet I kept going. What else was I going to do?
But on the eve of my seventeenth birthday, my uncle and aunt scraping together some money to try to have a celebration, something truly horrible happened again, hitting close to home.
; My cousin was a year younger than me, and a girl in her class had been taken from school grounds forcibly and raped.
These things happened. It was horrible but true. These things happened — only they happened to girls at other schools, or across town, or across the country. These things didn’t happen to sweet little girls named Maribel who often spent the night in the room I shared with my cousin, giggling late into the night about boys and crushes and who’d she end up marrying.
No one would want to marry her, now. She was damaged.
The event shocked my cousin into silence and stillness for an entire week. She couldn’t be coaxed to talk, to eat, or to move from her bed, where she stayed, white as the sheets she rested on.
Maribel, on the other hand, returned to school within a few days.
Most of the students shunned her, afraid that whatever misfortune that had singled her out would rub off on them — make them susceptible to some similar tragedy.
Seeing her alone at a bench for lunch, her back ramrod straight, I had to speak to her, to show her some form of support and prove that not everyone had turned their attention carefully away from her.
“Hey, Maribel,” I said, sitting beside her at the table. “I wanted to see how you were doing. My cousin is asking about you.” That, of course, was a lie. My cousin was asking about nothing, but had been silent for days.
Maribel turned to face me, and I shuddered. It wasn’t the bruised lip and the missing tooth beneath it. It wasn’t the idea that this was a girl deflowered. It wasn’t the fear that me even speaking to her would mean I would be next.
It was her eyes. Once sparkling and full of mischief and life, they were flat, dull, and dead.
“Hi, Sol,” she said, smiling at me. The gesture looked brittle and fragile — like it would break at any second, sending the rest of her teeth clattering to the ground. “I’m doing fine. Just fine.”
“That’s wonderful,” I said cautiously. Maribel did not look fine.