Leather? What the hell? “I wasn’t here this morning.”
Luscious shrugs. “Well, I thought it was you. Sure as hell looked like you.”
“Nah, I got up close to her,” the guy says. “She looked older and a little bot different. Bigger br**sts too.”
My heart misses a beat in my chest as I stand frozen in time, lips parted, shocked to my very core. “Older like someone who could be my mother?”
“Mother. Older sister. Whatever.” He jerks his arm out of my hold. “We’re done here. I gotta get back to work.”
This time I let him walk off. It doesn’t matter if he stayed or not. I’m completely speechless. Someone that looked like me. Someone like a mother or a sister. Problem is I don’t have a sister. And my mother’s dead.
So who the hell is she?
Chapter 4
Lola
I’m falling apart. Almost two years of suppressing my emotions and now their all manifesting in the form of anxiety. The thing that really sucks is that I only had an hour from when I was at The Dusky Inn until I had to meet my client for the night.
I think about calling my Aunt Glady, seeing if maybe she knows any of my relatives who look like me and perhaps have a leather fetish. There’s a ton I’ve never met before, so who the hell knows. Maybe my father has one of my aunts or cousins out looking for me. Although, I don’t know why the hell he’d have them give me strange notes. It doesn’t make any sense and I really don’t want to get my Aunt Glady involved in this. It’s why I cut ties with her almost two years ago.
So instead I do what I need to do and get cleaned up to go to work, making sure to pack my gun. I pretty much check over my shoulder every five seconds, knowing that someone out there, in the street, in the restaurant—everywhere—there’s probably someone watching me.
Thankfully, I’m a pro at turning myself off when I need to. Despite my rattle nerves, the night goes smoothly. I have dinner with my client Tenner, a tall, larger guy in his early thirties, who smells like cheap cologne and who can’t seem to take his eyes off my cle**age. I make sure to drink a lot of scotch, because scotch makes almost anything okay, including sex with a guy I’m in no way attracted too. Then we go up to the room where it’s clear he wants sex despite what he said to Nyjah so I strip everything off but my boots so my gun will stay hidden.
He’s nervous and it’s my job to make him relaxed so I sit him down on the bed and straddle him. “Relax baby,” I tell him as he grips at my hips. For a moment I wince at his touch, but then smile, pretending that it’s Layton I’m touching. I always picture him when I do this, which is probably f**ked up in so many ways but so am I. Sex with Layton had always been good, despite the many complications between us and it’s the one time I can think of him without being bombarded by emotions. Sex has always been sort of a relaxing, calming sort of experience for me, and now it’s become my way of numbing. Like I’ve devoured glass after glass of Whiskey.
“I am relaxed,” Tenner promises, then leans in to kiss me, his eyes closing, his lips puckered.
I put my hand over his mouth and slant back, shaking my head, but keeping my charming smile on. “No kissing on the mouth. Remember.” My rule, not The Dusky Inn’s. It was my one stipulation when I started working there, something that bugged Reagan but Nyjah made it his duty to inform all the clients of this. The no kissing rule had started with something my mother had told me, but honestly, after Layton died, I made a silent promise to myself never to kiss a guy ever. He’d stolen a short kiss that night when we f**ked in the bathroom stale and I want that to be the last kiss I ever have.
I lower my hand as his eyes open, and then let my hands wander toward his cock, turning inside everything off until I feel so numb I swear I’ve died. I’ve done it a hundred times and it’s starting to get somewhat alarming how easily I can shut down in the snap of a finger. Sometimes I wonder if one day I won’t be able to turn it back on.
As my hand brushes his harness, Tenner reaches down and grabs my wrist roughly, apparently shaking all of his nerves in a second flat—either that or it was just a facade. “I was told that I could do whatever.”
This isn’t the first time a guy’s gotten a little rough with me and I know the best thing to do is keep everything calm. “Well, whoever told you that was wrong? There are a few things I don’t do. Like kissing.” Why the hell did Nyjah not tell him this?
His fingertips press downward, fingernails biting my skin. “Wrong or not, I want what I was told I would get. I paid good money for you.”
“It’s just a kiss,” I tell him calmly. “No big deal. I have a lot of other talents.” I reach for his c**k again, although this time it’s not as easy at the first, my irritation getting to me.
He swats me hand away and suddenly I’m being flipped over onto the bed on my belly. He pushes down on me, pressing my face into the mattress. “It’s just a kiss for now, but the next thing I know you’ll be stealing my wallet and taking off before I even get laid.”
I don’t squirm. Don’t scream. Barely breathe. I’m not afraid. Not yet anyway. “Whoever did that to you didn’t work for Nyjah. We have rules there. Now just tell me what you want.”
He shoves on me harder, his hand on my back, his weight hovering over me and he leans down and breathes in my ear, “I want you to scream.” I feel his weight come down on me, his hand hitting me in the back of the head. It feels like my skull cracks and my ears start to ring.
“Mother f**ker,” I curse, blinking my vision back into focus. That went downhill really fast. I try to slam my head back against but he dodges my advances. Fighting against his weight, I wiggle my arm out from under me and lean to the side, reaching down to my boot. I can feel the tip of his hard on pressing against me, one hand grabbing my hair, the other pushing me down and I know that at any moment he’s going to slip inside me. It shouldn’t be different, but it is. It feels twister and makes me feel sick to my stomach so mustering up every ounce of strength I have, I push upward, forcing his weight off me. My hand slides into my boot and as I roll over I withdraw my gun.
He’s about to lunge at me, but catches sight of the gun and stops in his tracks, kneeling on the edge of the bed near my legs and putting his hands up. “What the hell is this shit? This wasn’t part of the deal.”
Sitting up, I keep the gun aimed at him, hating that my hand is a little unsteady. “What deal?”