A Kiss For You

by Rachel Van Dyken

  Where are my clothes?

  I was completely naked from the waist up, but thankfully, my panties remained.

  I had to get the fuck out of here.

  My stomach twisted. I let out an agonized moan and clenched my hands over my belly. The door opened, and the man from the night before appeared.

  They call me King

  He stepped into the room like he was stepping out of the gates of hell and onto earth where the very presence of us mere mortals pissed him off. He held my gaze with a steady glare that shook me to my very core.

  “Name,” he demanded, closing the door behind him, stopping at foot of the bed. He folded his muscular arms over his chest. On the right side of his neck a vein pulsed beneath the ink of his tattoos.

  His eyes darted down to my chest and I crossed my free arm over my breasts the best I could to cover myself.

  “What’s it to you?” I quipped. King wore the same dark clothes as the night before, same belts around his forearms. The only difference was the addition of a dark grey skullcap. In the light of day I noticed that the tattoos I’d caught a glimpse of the night before were very intricate. If you took the scary out of the equation, King was drop dead gorgeous. His eyes were so dark green they almost looked black. His lips were full and slightly pink.

  “I figured we might start with your fucking name and then move on to you telling me where the fuck that bitch went with my money.” He seethed.

  He was the most terrifyingly beautiful thing I’d ever laid eyes on. With my fear of the dark, things always seemed scarier at night when my mind tended to exaggerate the situation. But in the daylight King was more everything. More intimidating, more scary, more angry…more beautiful.

  “You stole from me, Pup. This is your one and only chance to tell me where the redheaded bitch went. You will pay one way or another, but if you tell me right now, you might just get out of paying with your life.”

  My head was fuzzy and starting to spin. My life was on the line, but I could only seem to focus on trivial things. “Where are my clothes?” I asked.

  “You stole six fucking grand from me, your fucking clothes should be the least of your concern.”

  Holy shit! Six grand?

  Fucking Nikki.

  “Don’t play with me girl.” King wrapped his hands around my ankles and yanked, sliding me forward until I landed flat on my back. My arm stretched as far as it could without tearing out of the socket, held captive by the handcuffs. My other hand was braced on the bed, my breasts were again exposed. “Are you worried I copped a feel while you slept? Maybe I did. Because what you are going to learn is that I can do whatever I want with you, whenever I want. Because right now, I fucking own you.”

  In all the time I’d been living on the streets, I’ve had some close calls, some serious gut check moments. I’ve seen things that have made my skin crawl and my heart race. I was very familiar with feeling afraid.

  Fear had nothing on King.

  “Don’t keep trying to cover those pretty tits of yours. Last night, you were about to wrap those pretty lips around my cock, so don’t suddenly feel the need to cover up now. Even though, those little girl panties of yours have kept me hard since I stripped you down.” King leaned forward, bracing a knee on the mattress on each side of my hips. He cupped my cheek in his hands. I tried to turn away from him and he dug his fingers into my jaw and yanked me back to face him. “Do you want to know what exactly it is that I do to people who steal from me, who take what’s mine?”

  “No,” I panted. And I didn’t want to know.

  “I’d refer you to someone who could tell you firsthand, little girl, but none of them are breathing right now.”

  Shit.

  “I don’t know where she is, I swear. Please, just let me go,” I pled as I squirmed underneath him. I didn’t want to die because of Nikki’s stupidity. “We can work something out,” I said. I have no idea what exactly I meant by that, but I would’ve said anything to get the hell out of those cuffs and out of that house.

  King looked me up and down. “I’m not interested. That ship has sailed,” he said, coming close enough to me to run a finger along my protruding collarbone. “You may be pretty, Pup, and those eyes of yours get my cock hard, but you’re all skin and bones. Besides, I don’t fuck junkies.”

  “I’m not a fucking junkie!” I screamed wildly. Being called a junkie when in the time I’d been living on the street I hadn’t touched a single drug, set me off like a lighter to a fuse.

  “Bullshit! There is no other reason you could possibly be stupid enough to steal from me besides needing a fix. And I know you’re not from around here, because if you were you wouldn’t have even thought about taking what’s mine.” His voice grew louder, his glare ice cold. He thought I was just like Nikki. A junkie. He expected me to cower.

  He expected wrong.

  “I don’t give a fuck who you are, asshole,” I seethed. “And you’re not as smart as you seem to think you are. Tell me something, who exactly was it who appointed you judge of all people?”

  I thought my words would start an all-out war but instead King didn’t look angrier, he looked only mildly amused. “Well you are partially right. Because when it comes to me and mine, I am the judge. I am the jury. And if need be, I am the motherfucking executioner.”

  His words hadn’t yet had the chance to marinate in my brain when my stomach took the opportunity to interrupt by growling loudly. King’s gaze followed the sound to where I hugged myself with my free arm around my mid-section in an effort to steady the ever-growing ache. The dizziness again threatened to take me under, but I fought it back.

  King was still sitting upright on his knees, straddling me. I sat up as far as the handcuffs would allow until my face was only inches from his. “Nikki is the junkie. I’m just hungry you fucking asshole!” I spat.

  King’s fists clenched at his sides. He raised his hand. I ducked and covered my face the best I could, bracing myself for the strike.

  But it never came.

  After a moment I opened my eyes. King was staring down at me, his hand raised, but not in anger, he was rubbing his palm over his short hair. His eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

  I was bound in his bed with no way out and no way of knowing what was going to happen to me. It was a bad time for my foot-in-mouth syndrome to be acting up. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I mean, I just—”

  “Shut up,” He said with a new calm control.

  “I don’t do drugs. I never have. I mean, not that I know of. You see, the thing is—”

  “Shut up.”

  My stomach growled again, it twisted so hard I saw stars in front of my eyes. I needed to eat. I needed to escape. I needed to be anywhere else, but in his bed. “I swear I didn’t take your money. It wasn’t me. That wasn’t the plan. I was just supposed to get a biker to—”

  “Shut the fuck up!” he roared, his explosive rage effectively silencing my scrambled monologue.

  My stomach twisted and turned again. This time I closed my eyes until the pain passed. I tried to wet my cracked lips with my tongue, but it was also dry and hung heavy in my mouth. King reached down and touched my cheek with the pad of his thumb. I was so involved in trying not to pass out that I barely registered that he was touching me. After a few moments with nothing but the sound of my heart beating in my ears, King abruptly stood up and walked out, slamming the door behind him.

  I was his prisoner.

  I was either going to die of hunger, fear, or at the hands of King. But the how wasn’t important. It was the when I was waiting for, because I was certain I wasn’t ever going to leave that house again.

  At least not alive.

  Doe

  I was drifting somewhere between awake and unconscious when the door opened and heavy footsteps approached the bed. Something metal was set on the nightstand, clanking and rattling as it settled. It was the smell that brought me back to the land of the living as abruptly as if smelling salts had
been waved under my nose.

  Food.

  The metal of the cuffs bit into my wrist as I lunged for the tray that was set just beyond my reach. I let out a frustrated shrill-sounding scream.

  “Easy now, killer,” a voice said. I hadn’t noticed the guy leaning on the dresser at the foot of the bed, his arms and legs crossed in front of him. I recognized him from the party the night before. Only when his eyes traveled down to my bare breasts, I remembered that I was still nude from the waist up. I quickly covered myself by balling up as small as I could, huddling close to the metal headboard.

  He smiled and slowly approached me.

  “No!” I shouted when he got close enough to extend his hand out to me.

  “No?” he asked. “So you don’t want this?” He picked up the tray and set it on the bed in front of me.

  “No, no, I do. I do want it,” I assured him. I sat up again and winced when my injured ear accidentally rubbed against the metal headboard. If it was food he was offering, my modesty was going to have to wait until after my belly was full. I removed my arm from my breasts and reached out to slide the tray closer to me. When I saw what was on it, I paused.

  What the hell?

  There were two plates. One held a sandwich of some sort, wrapped in white paper, a sticker with the name of the deli held the wrapping together. The other plate was not really a plate but a mirror. On it, white powder, cut into three lines along with a rolled-up dollar bill. Next to it was a plastic Ziploc bag containing a needle, spoon, lighter, and another smaller baggie filled with another type of darker looking powder.

  “What is all this?” I asked.

  “Breakfast,” he said straight-faced. “You get to choose one item from the tray and one only.” He sat down across from me on the bed.

  “Is this a joke?” Who the hell would choose drugs for breakfast?

  Nikki, I thought.

  “Choose wisely, girl.” He pointed to the tray.

  I grabbed the sandwich and tore off the wrapper before he could finish his sentence. I took a monster bite that contained both sandwich and paper.

  “Slow down,” he warned. I detected amusement in his warning. I ignored him, choking when I tried to swallow down half-chewed bites, but the feeling of chewing and swallowing was euphoric. I kept going until the sandwich was completely in my stomach.

  I didn’t need drugs. I was high on food.

  I wiped at the mess I made on my face and licked my fingers clean. He handed me a glass of water, and I downed it in three big gulps. I sat back on the bed and patted my bare stomach, no longer caring that I was practically naked in front of this stranger. I opened my mouth to speak when a sudden wave of nausea washed over me. I sat up and held a hand over my mouth.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, as I frantically looked around for something I could throw up in. I didn’t see anything within arm’s reach, but it only took him a second to realize what it was I needed. He leapt up and grabbed a metal wastebasket from the corner of the room and ran back, just in time for me to empty the entire breakfast into the basket. Every little bit of barely-chewed, undigested sandwich came back up in waves until once again my stomach was completely empty.

  “I told you to slow the fuck down.” He walked to the far side of the room and opened the window, tossing the entire basket out. “I’ll hose that out later.”

  I never cried when I woke up in the hospital and couldn’t even recall my name. I didn’t cry when I was told I might never regain my memory. I didn’t cry when I was thrown into a group home full of perverts. I didn’t cry when I ran away and had to live on the streets. I didn’t cry when I came to the realization that using my body was the only way I was going to be able to survive. I didn’t cry when a bullet grazed my ear. I didn’t cry when I was handcuffed to a bed by a tattooed psychopath who I was certain was going to kill me.

  But losing the first full stomach I had in weeks?

  I cried.

  Not just a few little tears. I sobbed. Loud and long. Shoulders shaking. No end in sight.

  Ugly cry.

  Hope. It’s something I hadn’t yet given up, but right then and there, I was ready to throw in the towel. I didn’t care if I stayed attached to that bed until I died and the skin rotted away from my bones.

  I was done.

  I’d been dealt all I could handle, and I was more than fucking over it.

  Over being afraid. Over being hungry. Over redheaded hookers. Over being shot at.

  Over this sorry excuse for a life.

  I sat back on the bed and rested my head against my arm, which hung at an awkward angle. I let my body go limp. Looking out the window, I noticed the sun was out. I didn’t even know what time it was. I didn’t care.

  No one looked for me when I might have been someone, so no one would be looking for me now that I was absolutely no one.

  It’s ironic really. I’d been wishing for a bed and a roof over my head and in a really fucked up way, for however long they kept me alive, I had it.

  The guy whose name I didn’t know left the room but left the tray on the bed. How much of that stuff did I have to take for it to be lethal? Half? All of it? Maybe, King’s plan was to inject me with the drugs himself. Or maybe he was a coward and would order his friend to do his dirty work for him.

  Maybe, if I was lucky, my death would be quick. Just a nice bullet to the head.

  Either way, it didn’t matter how I was going to go. I just knew it was the end, and oddly enough, it was comforting to come to terms with it instead of spending my remaining hours fighting it.

  I was beyond exhausted.

  Maybe, King thought I would make things easy on him and off myself with the drugs. I huffed. I wasn’t about to give him that satisfaction. If he wanted me dead, he was going to man-up and do it himself. I used every ounce of strength I had and kicked the tray off the bed. The mirror bounced off the carpet. The coke billowed into the air in a white cloud of fine powder.

  And I laughed.

  I laughed so hard my entire body shook and tears ran down my face. I laughed so hard that the sound of my laughter got caught in my throat. There I was. Half-naked. Handcuffed to a bed. Puke on my face. A tray of drugs scattered on the floor.

  Maniacally laughing like a schizophrenic who’d skipped out on her meds.

  The door opened again and in walked the same guy from earlier. I didn’t acknowledge him, just continued to stare out the window as the sun began to set.

  “Do you know how much that shit is worth?” he asked with his eyes wide.

  “Nope. And don’t know why you would bother bringing it to me since I already told your friend that I’m no fucking junkie.” I rolled onto my side, turning my back to him. “Why don’t you just kill me, and get it over with.”

  “It was a test,” he said, rounding the bed. He propped himself up next to me, his back against the headboard, a steaming ceramic bowl in his hands. “You passed.”

  “A what? What the hell does that mean?”

  “King. He wanted to know if you were telling the truth, so he tested you. A junkie would’ve said ‘fuck the food’ and dove nose-first into the dope.” He extended the bowl out to me. “Here. I’m Preppy, by the way.”

  Odd name for an odd guy. He looked like a cross between a thug, a teacher, and a surfer.

  I’d seen him briefly the night before, but I didn’t take the time to really look at him. Preppy was close to six feet tall. He wore light jeans and a short sleeved yellow collared shirt with a white bow tie. His sandy blonde hair was tied back into a wild ponytail on the top of his head, but beneath it his head was shaved clean on both sides above his ears, revealing intricate vine tattoos that started at his temples and circled around his head. His arms, hands, and knuckles were also covered with ink. He had a dark beard that didn’t match his hair color. At first glance, you’d think he was much older than he was, but it was his eyes that gave away his youth.

  “What is it?” I asked, staring into the steaming bowl
.

  “Chicken broth. Drink it slowly so you can keep it down. How long has it been since you ate?” He crossed his legs at the ankles and rested his hands behind his head.

  “Not sure.” I don’t know why but saying the words out loud made me feel ashamed in a way I hadn’t thought about before. “Days, I think.”

  Hesitantly, I took the bowl from his hands. It was warm on my palms and instantly made the ache in my weak hands subside. I lifted it to my mouth slowly, relishing the feeling of the steam against my cheeks and the warmth of the liquid as it spread down my throat.

  “Why are you even bothering with feeding me?”

  “You say you’re not a junkie, but your fucking ribs are practically poking through your skin, and I could sharpen my knife on that collarbone of yours. King’s not the kind of guy who starves someone to death.”

  “So, he’s not going to kill me?” I asked, hopefully.

  “Didn’t say that. Just said he wouldn’t starve you to death. Bears crew has a lead on the redhead. If we catch up to her and we find out you weren’t in on it, he might let you go.”

  “Might?”

  “He’s not the most predictable guy, and he’s been away for a few years. Hasn’t been acting like himself, so there’s no telling what’s running through his head right now.”

  “Years?” That’s when I remembered that the party last night was supposed to be a coming home party. “Where was he?”

  “State.”

  “College?”

  “Prison.”

  Prison made much more sense than college.

  “What did he do?” I was pushing my luck by even asking. But I thought that maybe, if I knew more about King—knew what made him tick—I would have more of a chance of convincing him to let me go.

  “You sure ask a lot of questions, little girl. Why do you want to know?”

  I shrugged and sipped more of my broth. “Just curious, I guess.”

  “He killed someone, got caught,” he said casually. I swallowed a huge mouthful of broth in one tight gulp.

  “Who?” My curiosity made my mouth run faster than the speed of my usual word vomit.