BABY FOR A PRICE: Marino Crime Family Read online

  “Isn’t this lovely, darling?” I hear myself say, as we tour the living room. Everything is as it should be on first glance: a regular, all-American, suburbs-type house, even if it is in the middle of nowhere. It’s one of those houses that seems like it was built on a factory assembly line, spitting out the same model all down the street. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t gorgeous, and that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be personalized. I remember in high school when I was looking into maybe being a decorator or an architect or a planner or something like that, and as I walk around the house, it all returns to me, all the frantic teenaged research I did. I watch, and notice, and compile a list in my head.

  “Oh, lovely,” Hound says, going along with my game.

  “So how long have you been married?” Michaela asks.

  “Three years,” Hound says quickly, so quickly that I infer he’s created this backstory already. “We were married in the spring of ’14, and we’ve been living in the city ever since.”

  “Oh, that’s just adorable,” Michaela says.

  Hound reaches over my shoulders and hugs me close. “We like to think so.”

  I give him a secret pinch, but I can’t deny I’m enjoying myself.

  Then we come full circle, and we’re standing at the front door.

  “Isn’t it just perfect?” Michaela beams.

  But I can see past her fake smiley face. I know what she’s hiding.

  Before Hound can answer, I interject: “Well, I don’t know if I would say perfect.”

  Michaela falters. “How—what—how do you mean that, sweetie?”

  “In the living room there’s a patch of wall which has been painted over in an attempt to conceal the damp, but you can still see the damp if you look closely, creeping up from the basement. As we walked into the second bedroom I noticed that you made sure not to touch the door handle, instead just pushing the door, which makes me wonder if the handle isn’t broken. When Hou…When Henry made to flush the toilet, you were pretty quick to distract him with the bath, telling him that it’s a new model. Why? Is there something wrong with the toilet?”

  I stop, suddenly aware of how quickly I’m talking, suddenly aware of Hound grinning down at me with more pride than I’ve been shown since high school, when Mr. Underwood gave me top grades in debate club. “Wow,” Hound says, turning to Michaela. “I think my wife has got you there. Would you please wait outside and give us time to speak alone?”

  Michaela looks at me like she’s seeing me for the first time, the same way an owner might look at a dog which has behaved lovingly for years and then bites out of nowhere. Then she straightens her dress which didn’t need straightening and click-clicks out the front door. “I’ll be in my car,” she says stiffly. “Take all the time you need.”

  “Oh, we will,” Hound says.

  When Michaela is gone, Hound asks me to show him the things I mentioned. I feel another swell of pride as I go about the house, showing him what Michaela was trying to hide, and it’s heightened by the way he looks at me, pride spilling out from his icy blues. Am I blushing? No, no way. I’m not blushing. That’s something nervous teenagers do—girls with hope—not women who get pawed at by men on almost a daily basis just so they can stay afloat.

  We’re upstairs and I’ve just showed him the toilet, which makes a loud cranking noise when flushed, a noise which sounds like an elephant in its final moments of life. I imagine Michaela out there in her car hearing the crank and wincing.

  “You’re evil,” Hound says, noticing my smile, reading it. How can he know me so well so quickly? It’s eerie. “You’re enjoying this.”

  “I am,” I admit. “I don’t know why…Hey, what’re you doing?”

  He backs me into the bedroom, kicking the door closed behind him. The bedroom is clearly the master bedroom of whoever lives here. Plush cushions almost drown the sheets and a fifty-inch flat-screen TV is mounted on the wall. Having a TV that big in the bedroom seems obnoxious to me, but I guess some people like it. Hound backs me all the way to the bed. I watch myself in the reflection of the TV, constantly surprised by how huge he is compared with me. In the reflection it’s even more obvious.

  “You’re scaring me,” I say, but it’s a lie and he knows it’s a lie.

  “Am I?” he whispers, leaning down.

  Last night, alone in my apartment, I couldn’t give myself to this man. And yet here, in broad daylight in somebody else’s house, with an impatient realtor clicking her heels outside, I find myself more willing to sink into him. I don’t know why that is. All I know is I’m floating on air, that this man has shown me some pride: pride for my mind, pride for my insight. And now when he presses his lips against mine the desire explodes inside of me, a hungry, animal desire I didn’t even feel in the alleyway. It grabs me by the shoulders and doesn’t let go. I leap up and wrap my legs around him, driving my hips down toward his groin, feeling his hard cock pressing through his jeans. We kiss passionately, tongues intertwined, drinking each other in. Then I start bouncing up and down, Hound lifting me and throwing me down with powerful hands—hands which are gripping my back, spreading over them hugely—and then he breaks off the kiss and tosses me onto the bed.

  “Fuck,” I moan, hands worrying at my jeans. “Fuck, Hound. Fuck.”

  “Fuck,” he agrees, as he pulls off his jeans.

  We strip methodically, neither of us in the mood for foreplay. My pussy is still aching from the alleyway, but I want him, badly, want him when I’m on my back and I can look up at his face, the face which a few minutes ago filled me with never-before-felt pride. Soon I’m lying with my jeans and underwear rumpled on the floor. I’m still in my hoodie and socks. And when Hound takes off his bottoms, his cock springing up like a length of steel, he doesn’t even take off his boots. He kicks his jeans off around them. Something about this drives me even crazier. It’s animal, it’s urgent. I can’t wait for him to be inside of me.

  He falls atop me, propping himself up with his hands either side of my head. The bed makes a loud creaking noise with his added weight. I feel trapped, but trapped in a good way. I want to be trapped. I’m panting as I reach down and take his cock in my hand, parting my legs and lifting them, pussy crying out desperately for him. When I guide him to my hole, I gasp, the thickness of him almost too much to handle. He pushes into me slowly, his massive cock parting my pussy, spreading into me. There’s pain, but the pain is soon pushed aside by the pleasure, pleasure which fills me as he slides deep, deep inside of me, far deeper than any man before Hound has ever gotten close to. His cock presses firmly against my sweet spot, causing me to ache, and then—Oh, fuck, and then I feel my pussy going tight, very tight, so tight that I think an orgasm might be coming. I think about where we are, how naughty this is, and my pussy gets tighter. Hound, noticing what’s happening, holds his cock in place, looking down at me with surprise.

  When it hits, I can’t help it, I scream. I scream loudly until I lean forward and bury my face in his shirt. My pussy goes so tight around his cock I think I’ll break it, and then in less than a moment it releases, the entire lower half of my body vibrating and my pussy gushing come down the length of him. I keep thinking: He hasn’t even fucked me yet, he hasn’t even fucked me yet. But I’m coming, tilting my hips so that his cock changes angles against my sweet spot, gripping his shoulders and sitting down, hard, so that I can squeeze every last ounce of pleasure from the moment. When I think it’s over, a second wave hits me, this one sharper than the last, the pleasure moving from my legs and my pussy up through my belly and chest, making my nipples hard, so hard that when Hound grabs them through the fabric of the hoodie, the orgasm explodes all over again and I’m writhing and screaming and bouncing. Soon the orgasm passes, but I’m still bouncing, and Hound is fucking me with all his power.

  The bed creaks under the strain, but neither of us care. I drive my hips down in time with his thrusts, spent from the unanticipated orgasm, but still enjoying the waves of pleasure that move throug
h me with each rough thrust of his unbelievably massive dick.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” Hound grunts, his cock buried balls-deep in me. “Fuck!”

  I wrap my arms around him as he comes inside of me, finding the way his cock goes from rock-hard to semi-hard and then soft, all whilst he’s inside of me, alluring in an unexpected kind of way. Then he rolls aside, lying on his back and panting. I do the same, closing my eyes and wondering if I’ll ever feel pleasure that surprising again: pleasure that creeps up on you and drives into you without warning.

  “That was—” he starts.

  “—incredible,” I finish.

  He looks at me and I look at him, and we both laugh. For a few moments, as we lie there with his come drying on somebody else’s sheets, I forget who he is, so that he becomes just a man, a sexy, funny man, lying in bed beside me. Nobody dangerous, nobody to be feared. It’s ruined when Michaela starts clicking up the stairs, calling, “Halloo! Everything okay up there?”

  For some reason, that brings home the reality. I just fucked my father’s debt collector for a second time. As I get dressed, I feel distant, and by the time we’re driving back to Austin I lay my forehead against the glass and pretend to be asleep just so we don’t have to talk.

  Chapter Nine

  Daisy

  Sarah isn’t working today, so the only thing I have to contend with is the prospect that Hound might have already killed Dad. After he dropped me off a couple of nights ago, my head was a mess, spinning like crazy, and I wanted to talk to Dad. I needed to check he was okay, too. When I called him and there was no answer, I didn’t think it was a big deal. I mean, he sometimes doesn’t even keep his phone charged. But when I went to his apartment and used my key to get in and found a pile of letters overflowing in his box and no sign that he’d even been back there, I started to get worried. Now, after hours of calling all his scumbag friends and being told that nobody has seen him, I have to smile and be sexy and flirty with the assholes at the Shack all while wondering if the man I’ve fucked twice now has killed my father. Not exactly a good start to a workday!

  It’s made even worse by the customer I’m dealing with. I’m always wary when men come here alone, like this man has. If men come in groups, they might egg each other on, but usually there will be one or two sensible ones who will keep the others in line, or the wild ones will be too embarrassed to act like total freaks in front of their friends. But this man sits alone, smiling blandly in a way that makes me uncomfortable. He’s tall, thin, with a sleek nose and hands with long, manicured fingernails. He wears a buttoned-up shirt with a bow-tie and pleated trousers, with shiny brown shoes.

  I go over to him and say, “Hey, honey, I hope you’re having a great day!”

  “You hope, do you?” the man says, snorting out a laugh. “You really hope I’m having a good day?”

  I roll with it, exclaiming stupidly that I really, really do! God, I hate when my voice is like this.

  “Right. Maybe you should show me how much you hope by getting on your knees—No, no, now, Charles, don’t be rude.” He wags his finger at himself as though disciplining a child. “The nice lady—” leaning forward to spy at my name-tag, and my breasts “—Daisy is going to get us our food, okay? I’ll take a glass of water with five ice cubes and a burger without cheese or lettuce or pickle or onion or tomato, just the bread and the burger, okay?”

  “Sure!” I beam. “That’s great!”

  “Great,” the man—Charles—echoes. “Great. Hmm, is it? Great?”

  “Well, sure!”

  “Okay, then. Isn’t part of your job walking away so I can look at your ass? Seriously, how do you women fit into those skirts? Go on then, walk away. I want a look.”

  The way he says this really creeps me out, even more than if he was some asshole frat boy reaching for me, but I have no choice but to turn around and take his order to the kitchen. As I pass Marsha, she says, “That’s Charles Wheeler. He’s a bit, well, off, you know? So just, well, you know, sort of be careful.”

  Be careful? I want to ask. Be careful about what? Is he really that bad? But Marsha is swept away by another Shack girl and I’m left to my other tables, before Charles’ food is ready and I’m forced to return to him. As I carry the food to his table, painfully aware of his eyes locked onto me, I plaster a smile over my face. “That’s the Shack girl way!” Steve told me when I first got this job. “If a customer spills a drink, you smile! If a customer says something inappropriate, you smile! And if a customer reaches for your ass?” He left the question open for me there, and I felt I had no choice but to chime in with an enthusiastic, “Smile!” Now, I lay the food and water on the table, smile, and tell him to please enjoy his meal. I’ve walked no more than four steps away from him before he clicks his fingers at me and yells, way too loudly, “Here, girl!”

  Swallowing my rage, my smile faltering for less than a moment, I turn around and go to him. “What is it, honey?”

  “Honey,” he mutters. “Honey. That’s always confused me. Who says honey is a good thing? Is honey a good thing for a bear when he has bees buzzing all around his face? Is honey a good thing for an obese person who’s spent their whole fatty life slurping the stuff and now they’re so fat they can barely walk? Honey.”

  I want to slap this man across the face. I want to head-butt him. Things I’ve never thought about before, like filling a glass with boiling water and throwing it in his face, come to me now. But I’m a Shack girl and I know that Steve is lurking somewhere in the kitchen, that I’d risk my job if I stood up for myself. I barely have time to reflect how pathetic this state of affairs is—especially after my tiny liberation with the realtor—before Charles is clicking his fingers at me.

  “Hey, hey, don’t go floating off into the clouds. I’m talking to you. You shouldn’t be so rude when someone is talking to you.”

  “What is it…?” Sweetie, I was about to say, but who knows what rant that will send him on. I see why Marsha warned me, now. “Is there something wrong with your food?”

  “How would I know?” He looks at me like I’m the stupidest person he’s ever seen. “I haven’t touched my food yet. No, Daisy, sweet Daisy, I want you to do your Lady Shack thing with me, like lean over the table and pretend to clean it so I can get a good look at your titties. Those are darn nice titties!”

  “I’m sorry,” I say stiffly, “but I don’t think that table needs cleaning.”

  Charles seems taken aback by this. He points to a table of men in suits, and then says, “I just saw some blonde slut, some fucking whore—no, no, don’t be rude. I just saw some blonde woman leaning over there and shoving her titties in their faces.”

  My palms sting and for a second I wonder what the hell’s going on. Then I unclench my fists, releasing the place where my fingernails have bitten into my skin. “Perhaps that table was dirty.”

  “Oh, no, no, no.” Then, moving too fast for me to react, he jumps forward and grips his hands down painfully on my legs, yanking me toward him, muttering under his breath, “Tried to be nice, tried to be nice.” His manicured fingernails are sharper than they look, biting into my skin as my own bit into my palms moments ago, and before I can slap his hand away or yell out for help—not that yelling out for help is a good idea—he’s pulled me into his lap. “Ooh, that’s the stuff.” He licks his lip. I think about the way Hound pulled me into his lap, how that was exciting and this is revolting.

  “Get off me!” I hiss, but I’m keeping my voice low. After all, my catchphrase still holds true: I need the money.

  “Ooh, wriggle. That’s it, wriggle—”

  Somebody’s strong hand lifts me to my feet by gripping my torso, a massive paw which covers my entire chest. I’m lifted up and set down, and then Hound is leaning down over Charles. Charles is fidgeting with his bowtie in Hound’s shadow. Hound grips the man’s neck and lifts him, one-handed, completely off his feet, holding him in the air and staring into his eyes with anger I couldn’t imagine on Hound�
�s face before now: not his smiling, carefree face. “You see those fucking rings on her finger?” he growls, and then he roars: “Do you see those fucking rings on her finger?”

  Restaurants are never like movies. They’re louder, and people take far longer to react. So when Hound shouts, the place doesn’t immediately go quiet, the music doesn’t die, and everybody doesn’t stop what they’re doing to look. But people at the surrounding tables begin to stir. I jump to Hound and place my hand on his shoulder, aware that Steve could emerge from the kitchen at any moment. “Please,” I whisper in his ear. “Hound, let him go. Please. This is—this is part of the job!” When he doesn’t drop him, Charles’ face turning the color of beet red and his legs kicking uselessly, I thump Hound in the arm. “I said let him go!” I snap.

  “Anyone touches my wife,” Hound says, his ice-blue eyes cold with rage, “I’ll break his goddamn neck. You’ve been warned, you bowtie-wearing fuck.”