by Aimie Grey
“I love you, and I’m also in love with you. I can’t stand the thought of anyone else getting to see you like that.” He reached across the table and brushed a tear from my cheek “Why are you crying?”
“No one’s said that to me, and meant it, since I was eight years old.”
“Baby, I…” He trailed off, at a loss for words.
“I lov—”
“Well, if it isn’t Officer Hottie Pants!” a drunken blonde hollered as she stumbled to our table. “Are you gonna come home with me again tonight? You’ll have to ditch the whore; I don’t swing that way.”
My stomach jerked up into my throat. Go home with her again? Whore? Was I somehow visibly branded for life?
“This is not appropriate,” Carter replied. His jaw clenched, and he kept his eyes trained on her. Since the moment we met, he’d always made me the focus of his attention. Now I felt like I was on the outside looking in.
“I’m hoping to get to take an oral sobriety exam this time, if you know what I mean.”
Anger clouded my vision as I tried to stare the bitch down. She seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place her.
“Jill, go back to your table,” Carter commanded.
“That no-nonsense voice of yours is so hot,” she slurred.
I’d had it. “What the fuck is she talking about, Carter?”
Turning toward me, his eyes went wide, as if he just remembered I was there. “Give me a minute, I’ll be right back.” He stood and walked her toward the back hallway that led to the restrooms. While they crossed the room, he kept his hand on the small of her back and leaned in close to whisper in her ear.
By the time his request for “a minute” had turned into ten, I was beyond ready to leave. He finally returned, without Jill, just as I was picking up my bag.
“Baby, don’t leave.”
“Who is she? Why does she look familiar?”
He diverted his eyes to the table. “Remember the night we met? The waitress at the diner?”
“Oh my God! You fucked her? After everything you said?” Tears of rage burned my eyes.
“Of course not; you can’t possibly think I would do that.” Unlike me, he kept his voice quiet to keep from adding to the scene I was making.
When he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, the shadow on his left cheek lifted. Red. I literally saw red. “Then why the fuck do you have her lipstick on your face! The two of you seemed awful cozy just now.”
“I had an…encounter…with her at work. I’m telling you, that bitch is insane. She tried to kiss me, and when I turned away, she got my cheek. Even if I’d never met you, I would never, ever consider touching her.”
“Work! You do road construction in the middle of the fucking night, how would you have met her at work?” I almost collapsed when a couple of pieces to a puzzle I didn’t know needed solving clicked into place. “Did she give you those scratches on your neck?”
“Yes—but it’s not what you think.”
I dashed to the front of the bar, the cool night air slapped me in the face when I ran outside. Holding my stomach as I moved down the sidewalk, I ducked around the corner of the building and leaned against the wall. My imagination was running away with me. It pictured him fixing her flat tire on the side of the road. Or maybe she got into a fender bender near where he was working, and he checked to make sure she was okay. In either of those scenarios, she would be extremely appreciative. Maybe she stopped to ogle the hot road crew and propositioned him. She wasn’t unattractive, at least not on the outside. Even if he did truly love me, that wouldn’t necessarily stop him from testing the waters. Guys cheated on their significant others all the time at the club, and anyone would be better than a whore, right?
He came to stand beside me but didn’t speak right away. I replayed the scene in my mind to see if I’d missed any clues. Maybe I was overreacting since it happened in the middle of an argument-slash-confession of love. She was obviously drunk when she came to the table. Carter was an incredibly handsome man, and he did say she was crazy, so she might have just been a little stalker-ish. The instant replay came to a dead stop as soon as the dialogue began. My stomach left my throat and fell to the ground. “Why did she call you ‘officer’?”
“Alissa, calm down and let me explain.”
“Have you been lying to me this whole time?”
“Technically, I didn’t lie. I told you I worked on the freeways, which for the most part, I do. You just assumed—”
“You’re a fucking cop!”
“Yes, I am.” Carter’s voice was so low I could barely hear him.
Everything started falling into place. He avoided talking about work almost as much as I did. He had a loaded gun in the house and stayed relatively calm when that asshole was attacking me. The weird things he said to the nine-one-one operator. He didn’t want me to talk to the police that night, supposedly because he knew it would upset me, but maybe he was just trying to keep his secret. I hadn’t met any of his friends. He said it was because they might have seen me at the club, but maybe the real reason was because they were cops, too. Wait… friends… cops… club…
“That night…the night when you came to my room at the club…were you really there for a bachelor party?” He looked away from me. “Fuck! Has any of this been real?”
“How can you ask me that after everything we’ve been through?”
“It seems a little convenient that you moved into my building, got me to trust you, showed up at my job, still wanted to be with me after you found out what I did… You already knew, didn’t you? You’ve known since the very beginning. I was your assignment, or at least part of it.”
“No.” He fell quiet for a moment while I stared him down and then added, “I swear.”
“I told you everything. I trusted you, and this whole time it was just an act!” I was attracting a crowd, but I didn’t give a shit.
“Come on, let’s go home and talk about this.”
“I’m not going home with a cop.” The word was sour on my tongue.
“Why are you so scared? Even if I was trying to take you down, which I’m not, what’s the worst that could happen for a first offense? Pay a fine, do some community service, check in with a probation officer once a month?”
“I’d lose everything.”
“Don’t you think that’s a little dramatic?”
“Oh, so you think they would still let me go to law school and be admitted to the bar with a criminal record?”
“Why would I pretend to be with you for something as petty as solicitation?”
“I don’t know. It’s the first thing that has ever made sense about you wanting to be with me. Just tell me what you want from me. My entire life is on the line—”
“Is it so hard to believe that I just want you? That I’m in love with you?” he whispered.
“Yes.” No one had ever loved me, not really. I was a piece of trailer trash who grew up to be a dirty whore. No matter how hard I tried to make a better life for myself, I would never become more than what I already was. I was nothing. For the past few weeks, I’d fooled myself into believing that I could have it all. That I was actually worth something to someone. That I could do something important with my life.
“What can I do to prove it to you?”
“Nothing. There’s no reason you should want me and every reason you shouldn’t. If you really did love me, you would have told me the truth before now.”
“You’re not the only one with something to lose, you know.” He ran his fingers through his hair almost violently. “You know my parents don’t approve of my career choice. I’ve spent the past six months writing traffic tickets to scum like Jill. This was my first opportunity to get my name in front of the higher-ups; it was my first baby step toward moving forward in my career. The only way I’ll ever be able to show my parents I’m not a total fuck-up is to move up in the force and do something important.”
“Why didn’t you just arrest m
e? How do I know you aren’t still trying to get evidence or information?”
He looked both ways down the alley, to make sure the crowd I’d attracted had disbursed, and then spoke quietly. “If there is something shady going on at the club, we could certainly find someone else to arrest, or flip, or whatever else it is you think I’m after. This isn’t an organized crime investigation. It’s relatively small potatoes; just enough to get my name mentioned around the department.” He ran his fingers through his hair again. “The reason I didn’t tell you I was a cop when we first met is because I had just been given the assignment a few days before. Even though my part was small, since we were going undercover, I couldn’t talk to anyone about my job. They took a group of rookies and sent us in on a scouting mission. We were supposed to determine if there was potentially anything illegal going on there. In addition to prostitution, there was some intel that led the brass to believe some of the clubs in the area launder money and sell drugs. Our job was to observe and report, nothing else. The club you work at was the fifth one we’d visited, and we went to three more after.” He paused to take a deep breath. “I also wasn’t completely honest about the guy who assaulted you in my apartment.”
“So, you’re saying you lied to me not even fifteen minutes ago?”
“Please, just hear me out,” he pleaded. “His name is Stavros. He did follow you home from the club, but not because you flirted with him. I recognized him as soon as I came into the room. He was the bouncer at one of CM’s other clubs I’d visited as part of the assignment. Turns out, his boss caught wind of the investigation and did some digging on me and my team. At some point, he must have seen us together and figured out who you were and where you worked. That night, he sent Stavros to do his dirty work—to send me a message. Anyway, I knew the incident was related to the investigation, so I sent you away before you caught on.”
“Why are you telling me this now?”
“Because I want—no, I need—you to trust me. I was ordered to tell you it was a customer and nothing more. I’m risking so much right now, but I’d give up everything for you.”
I wanted to believe him so badly, but it made absolutely no sense. He was an officer of the law, and I was a whore. There was no reason he should want to be with me, no reason for him to love me. Self-preservation won out over fleeting visions of hearts and happy endings.
“I need to go home.”
“Please, promise me you’ll think about what I said. I’m not even on the case anymore; I’m back to catching drunk drivers in the middle of the night.” He was on my heels as I started down the sidewalk. “At least let me drive you back to your car.”
“No, I need to walk.”
“I’ll walk with you.”
“I need time.”
“How much time?”
Forever. “I don’t know if there is enough time to process something like this.”
“I’ll wait. No matter how long it takes, I’ll wait for you.”
“You don’t get it, do you? For the sake of argument, let’s say you aren’t out to get me.” I spun on him, stopping him in his tracks. “You still lied to me. You manipulated me to get what you wanted.”
“All I wanted was you. I didn’t want to lose you. It’s just my job. I’m still the same person.”
“That was my decision to make, not yours. You took away my right to choose who I was with, just like my parents did.”
“That isn’t fair, and you know it. I never forced you to do anything.”
“You conned me into sleeping with someone I couldn’t trust. You forced me to be with a fucking cop. God, I’m an idiot for not seeing it sooner.”
“I was going to tell you everything. I just needed to find the right time.”
“Time’s up.”
Chapter Eleven
Lisa. I needed Lisa. She never got attached; never got hurt. She was tough as nails. She would’ve taken what happened with Carter in stride. She wouldn’t have stayed in bed for forty eight hours straight like a heartsick teenager. I had to find her.
After washing the days of despair from my body, I got dressed and headed to the one place I hoped I could erase Carter from my mind, at least for a little while.
“Hey, Bruce¸” I said when I walked into his office.
“Hey, Lisa, glad you’re feeling better. We can use you on the floor tonight.” I’d called in sick two nights in a row, which was something I’d never done before.
“There’s something I want to ask you. I’ve been waiting tables for over a month. I want—I need—to go back to my old job. At least for one night. Please, I’ll give you part of my tips.”
“You don’t have to do that. I got a call from Tommy-boy the other night. Said he’s in town for a few days and asked me to call him if you were going to be available.”
“Perfect. Can I be in the show?”
“Sure. Go tell Shanna to trade with you for the night. Shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Thanks, Bruce. You don’t know how badly I need this.”
It had been a while since I’d twirled around the pole, but it all came back to me the moment I stepped on stage. Even though I looked like her, I didn’t have to be Lisa to do this part of the job. This was something I’d always done for myself. My body belonged to me: not my parents and definitely not Carter. If I wanted to spin around in the air and hang upside down by my ankles butt naked, then that’s exactly what I would do.
When I was standing at the edge of the stage, working the clasp on my wisp of a bra, I made eye contact with the one man who’d never let me down. Granted, I’d never had any real expectations of him, but it was something I couldn’t say about anyone else. Thomas stood at my feet, looking up at me with those lustful blue eyes. Lisa was going to have fun with him tonight. I winked at him as my breasts fell free, and then leaned down close when he motioned me closer.
“I got every single one of your appointments tonight. I will make you come if it is the last thing I do.”
The bra dangling from my fingers slid down into his hands. “I hope you do.”
When I began to straighten up, he reached out to me but didn’t touch. “Don’t shower. I want to lick every drop of sweat from your body.” And I would let him.
I went directly from the stage to my usual room and found Tommy waiting for me, already naked. “I didn’t want to waste any time,” he explained. “And I don’t plan on finishing early—I intend to put every single minute I have with you to good use.”
“What happened to finding someone for a relationship? I didn’t expect to see you again.”
“You were right; it’s not something I can jump into. It might have just been phase.”
“Good. I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you tonight.” He was safe. I could let myself go with him.
“You really mean that, don’t you?”
“I always mean it.”
“No, this is different. What happened?”
“Well,” I said as I grabbed a condom from the shelf near the one-way mirror, “let’s just say I’ve had a shitty week and need to let off some steam.” I ripped open the packet with my teeth and made my way back to Tommy.
“I’m more than happy to help.” His dick twitched as I straddled his legs, sitting on his knees while I rolled the condom slowly down his length. While my hands were busy, I let my tongue trace the lines of the abstract tattoo that covered his right shoulder.
When I raised up to adjust my position on his lap, my breasts pushed up against his face. He tilted his head just right and captured my nipple in his teeth. Tommy was the only client I’d ever let use his mouth on me in any way. I didn’t trust anyone else.
“Can I do it tonight?” Thomas asked. He’d begged to go down on me almost every time we were together. I’d always refused; there were some boundaries even Lisa didn’t want crossed. But Lisa was in rare form tonight and couldn’t get enough of Thomas. It was go big or go home. And there wasn’t a fucking chance in hell I was going hom
e.
“Yes,” I moaned as his finger rubbed against my clit.
“It’s about fucking time.”
Within seconds, we had switched places. Once I was settled on the chair, I spread my legs wide for him and he stepped between them.
“I’m going to make this so good for you,” he promised. He took my mouth in a fierce kiss, which was usually another off-limits activity, even for him, as he dropped to his knees in front of me. He didn’t waste any time before diving in. As soon as our lips parted, his tongue began to feast on my pussy. Complete sensation overload was the only way to describe it. Lisa didn’t know how to deal with such an intimate encounter. She was an expert at fucking; not getting teased and tormented by Thomas, who was definitely skilled in bestowing oral pleasure. It was too much. Lisa began to short circuit. “Stop,” I said as my palm pushed back against his forehead.
What the fuck had I been thinking? Lisa was merely a wall to hide behind, and she wasn’t strong enough not to buckle under the immense pressure I was putting on her. She may have been able to keep me sane for years, but she couldn’t cover up the gash in my soul that was continuously expanding.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, looking up at me from his position on the floor.
“I’m sorry, I can’t do this.” I failed to keep a tear from dampening my cheek. “A lot has happened since the last time you were here. I’ll make sure you get your money back.” I’d give it to him out of my own pocket if I had to.
“Wait, I don’t want you to get in trouble.” Thomas took my hands and gently reversed our positions once more. “Just bounce on my lap for a few minutes. I’ll fake it, and then no one will suspect anything.”
“Why would you do that for me?”
“Because I like you. I know we don’t really know each other, but I can tell you’re a good person. Madison wouldn’t be friends with you otherwise,” he said. I straddled his hips and rubbed my core against his hard-on; there was no reason he shouldn’t get at least a little something for his money. “We all go through hard times. You were there for Madison during hers, and I know she’ll be pissed as hell if she were to find out that I didn’t help you during yours.”