WIFE FOR A PRICE Read online

  I make sure to crouch low, trying to work out what the best course of action is. I have to do something, I know, but only if it looks like it’s going bad. Maybe there’s a chance Dad might be able to talk his way out of it. I refuse to believe somebody can spend decades sinking into and then partially paying off debts without developing something of a silver tongue. But if it goes south, what then? Am I going to charge into the fray with a trashcan-lid shield and a banana-peel Morningstar? The image momentarily rises in my mind: a knight in a skin-tight Lady Shack uniform swinging a banana peel over her head and deflecting blows to the metallic clang of metal. No, I’ll have to use my silver tongue, if that even exists. Still, perhaps it won’t come to that…

  “I have different bank accounts!” Dad breaks out, flapping his arms. “I do! I have bank accounts for all different kinds of things. Please, listen to me, this is real now. This isn’t the lie. But I can’t tell you all the details. If I could tell you—Yeah, yeah, come on, man, it’d fix all my problems. But I can’t give you all of it. But I can say this. Look, listen. I can say this. I have another bank account with over a million—way over, way, way over—just waiting to be released. Once all this legal shit is done, I’ll be richer than God. You’ll see. I promise!” Something about the earnest way Dad speaks give me pause. Maybe it could be true, I reflect, but then I remember that tomorrow morning I’m working fourteen hours straight. “It’s a—I can’t tell you the details because if they find out I don’t get my money! I signed a—what’d’ya call it? NDA! I signed an NDA!”

  “You know who I am,” Hound says. It isn’t a question. He sounds tired.

  Dad nods respectfully, the same way I once saw him nod in the bank when I went with him to pay his over-withdrawal fees, nodding to something larger than himself.

  “Then you know I’m not an unfair man, sir,” Hound says. “My momma taught me two things: always respect your elders, and never hit a woman. But then again, that was before she hightailed it down to Cali to start a new family without so much as a goddamn postcard. Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is this. I respect you, because you’re an old man and you seem pretty harmless. But I also respect my employer, and I also respect the fact that I’ve got a job to do. So what the fuck am I supposed to do here? I’m being honest when I say that I have no desire to smash your head into that wall there.” He indicates the wall in question with a lazy swipe of the hand. “But I also have no desire to go back to my employer with no plan about how to recoup his losses.”

  He sighs again, shaking his head.

  “I’m going to need your teeth,” he says.

  “Wait—what? My…My teeth !”

  Dad begins groveling, talking very fast. I don’t think even he knows what he’s saying.

  Hound doesn’t click his neck side to side, or crack his knuckles, or make some tough guy comment. He just takes a slow step forward. It’s like he isn’t there at all, like he’s floated somewhere else and is letting his seven-foot body slip into Violence Mode. I don’t want to see him go into Violence Mode, especially where Dad is concerned, so I stand up from my place behind the wall and shout, “Wait!”

  Dad stops groveling and Hound turns to face me. I see the moment the violence stops: a flicker in his eyes, life returning. Dad takes longer to notice me through his tears. “D-Daisy?” he says uncertainly. “What are you doing?”

  I swallow nervously. That’s a good question. What exactly is my plan here? I’ve left the banana peels and trashcan lids behind.

  “I don’t think you want to hurt people!” I yell. Or does my voice just sound too loud in my own ears? I can hardly tell over my panting breath. “I don’t think you want to hurt a man half your size and twice your age,” I go on, looking into his eyes, which are not the eyes of some mindless thug at all; they’re the eyes of a man who has been playing the mindless thug for a long time. Maybe just like my eyes aren’t the eyes of a mindless Shack girl, but the eyes of a woman doing the same. “There must be a way to resolve this without hurting anybody. There must .”

  “You’re brave,” Hound says, watching me closely. “You don’t know me at all. What if I just take out a machete right now and start hacking at the both of you? What the fuck made you jump out here like that? You could’ve gone and gotten help, the police…well, I guess the boys in blue wouldn’t work for Dean, right? Too many connections to illegal gambling dens and the like.” Hound strokes his stubble, thinking. I just wait, toes curled in my heels, sweat making it feel like I’m in a sauna. “I’ve got a good, uh, rapport with my employer.” He pauses for a moment at the word rapport , as though using it for the first time. Maybe he thinks I’ll giggle at him. But Charlie Chaplin could dropkick Amy Schumer right now and get nothing from me. “I could talk to him, if I had a plan, but I can’t go back there with nothing. I can’t just skip in there and say, Hey, you know that thing you wanted me to take care of, well, I just completely ignored it .”

  As he talks, I see his eyes once again straying to my body, my legs and my breasts. I’m used to men staring at me, but the way Hound does it is different. He’s not like an overexcited young boy, as most of the men in the Shack are. He’s not just pleased to be in the general vicinity of a woman. And he’s not in the least intimidated. No, he’s looking at me meaningfully, with real intent there. I can’t recall ever being looked at like that before. And so I’ll run with it. All my adult life has been spent fighting to keep what remains of my family safe. And now I’ll do the same. And if, maybe, I enjoy it just a tiny bit? If, maybe, I want to do it anyway?

  “I can pay my father’s debts,” I say.

  The corner of Hound’s lips twitch. “Really? You have the money?”

  “I am willing to discuss a payment plan,” I reply. “But first, you have to let him leave.”

  Hound shrugs. “I can always find him again, if need be, unless he’s got some secret high-powered connections I don’t know about?”

  I shake my head. So does Dad, and I have to admit I’m slightly wounded by how quickly and eagerly Dad shakes his. He can’t wait to be out of here, even if it means leaving me with a man who just threatened to collect all his teeth. I’m as annoyed by him as I am by myself for being surprised. He’s spent his whole life behaving this way. People don’t suddenly change. Part of me wants to just leave him here, to whatever fate Hound decides is best for him, but my chest gets painfully tight at the thought, and all I can think of is Mom, looking away from me in disappointment.

  “Then go.” Hound shrugs. “Just know that if we can’t sort this out—”

  He doesn’t even get a chance to finish. Dad shouts, “Okay!” and then is gone, hurrying past me, eyes downcast. “I’ll fix this,” he mutters, before jogging down the alleyway.

  “It’s pretty incredible how they make clothes these days,” Hound says, walking across the alleyway toward me. He stops about a foot away, so close I can smell something papery and musty on him, underneath his manly scent.

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “Well, take the company that manufactured that there uniform. They’ve somehow put pockets in it that makes thousands of dollars be able to squeeze into skin-tight skirts. Incredible.”

  I bite my lip, wondering if I’ve made a mistake. But I don’t think this man would hurt me. I’m sure of it, in fact, which doesn’t make any sense to me.

  “I take it you don’t have the cash,” he says, looking down at me.

  Despite everything, I feel a tingle whisper up my thigh. Of all the things that have happened to me in, or near, The Lady Shack, I’ve never felt even a hint of real lust. I tell myself: I’m doing this for my family. But I can’t ignore the tingle, or how huge this man is, so big I have to crane my neck just to look into his face. I can’t ignore how my nipples are already getting hard and how my mind is already skipping away from me.

  “Maybe we can work something out,” I say, shocked by the sound of my own voice. I sound confident, sexy, seductive, way more than I ever h
ave giggling over a group of balding businessmen whilst watching the clock. I’ve always seen all men as essentially the same: jerky, jock-types who nod and smile just to get to your body. But Hound is somehow different. Maybe he’s a jerk, too. I don’t know him well enough to say. But there’s less pretense about him, and I get the sense that he’d make quick work of any of the usual assholes who hit on me. I find myself leaning forward so that my breasts brush against his blood-red T-shirt. “What do you think?”

  He grins down at me. “You’ve got to know,” he says, “that you can’t come at me with a body as tight as that, with a face as sexy as yours, and expect me to back off. So you need to answer a question. Do you really want this?”

  I look inside myself, wondering. I’ve never been sure if I really wanted anything, I realize. Maybe when I was young and Mom was still alive, but the day the cancer attacked her, I stopped wanting and just started doing. It wasn’t a question of want. I couldn’t even let it factor into my decisions because it would upset me too much. What teenager wants to drop out of school and work like a dog? What woman wants to work at The Lady Shack and smile at asshole guys? And yet, as I lean even closer to this mysterious, giant of a man, I find that I do want it. At least, I think I do.

  “I…I don’t know how to tell,” I answer, honestly. Too honestly. I’m supposed to be playing the sexy seducer, not giving him a glimpse into my heart. “I mean—yeah, baby. I want it, bad .”

  “No,” he says. “No, I don’t want that. I can pay for that. I want you.”

  “You want me to want it? Why do you care?”

  His lips twitch again, and then he reaches forward and slides his hand up my dress, to my panties, and presses his middle and ring fingers against my pussy. He presses hard, pushing against my clit, watching my face carefully.

  The pleasure hits me like a speeding truck, taking my unawares. I didn’t realize how wet my pussy was until now, with the wetness filling my panties. The tingles multiply, becoming more intense, becoming so intense a moan escapes my lips.

  “Because when you come all over my dick, I want it to be real . I want to hear you moan, and know it’s real .”

  I twist my lips here and there, letting the fakeness seep out of me like water from a burst balloon. “It feels good,” I whisper. “It does. It really does.”

  Maybe I am doing this for my family, but that doesn’t mean I can’t do it for me at the same time. Maybe it’s time I started thinking about me every once in a while anyway. But even as I sink into the pleasure, a little nervous voice echoes around my head: “What are you doing? Is this right? What are you doing? Is this right?”

  Chapter Four

  Hound

  I want to be a better man, goddamn it, I do, but when you’ve got a woman as fine as this twitching in the palm of your hand, it’s difficult. I think of the image I’ve had of myself these past few months, of a learning man who respects people around him and all that shit, and I can’t remember why that was appealing. Her pussy is warm, moist against my fingertips, her moans low and real. Even if the alleyway is stinking and disgusting, she makes it better just by being here, hot to the touch, nipples pushing so hard against her bra I can see it through her Lady Shack tank top.

  “Are you going to come?” I ask her, looking down into her eyes, which flit open and closed as she rides my fingers. All around the alleyway, I can hear cars honking and people shouting and tires screeching, but that just makes it all the more dangerous. The man I was striving to be would take his hand away and ask her to go back to a hotel room at least, but I can’t, not now. I’m too hard for that. Rock-fucking-hard. Pressing against my jeans like I’m going to explode. All thoughts of literature and learning and houses drift away. I’m left with nothing but my cock and this cute, big-assed, big-titted moaning woman. “Are you going to come all over my fucking fingers?”

  She bites her lip when she nods, looking nervous. Women must know how much it drives us crazy when they do that, biting their lip, like they’re scared of their pleasure but can’t help but want it at the same time. I push her underwear aside, feeling her lips, which are swollen and wet. Pushing down from her clit, I go toward her hole, my fingers getting wetter the closer I get.

  “Tell me you want me to fuck you,” I say, as I slide my middle finger deep inside of her. Fuck, but she’s tight, one of those pussies which grips like a hand and only loosens after some teasing. I push deeper and deeper, loving how wet and warm she is.

  “I do want you to fuck me,” she says quietly. She sounds surprised. Surprised at herself, maybe. “I really do.”

  I push another finger inside of her, opening her even more. I really mean to rub her and tease her until she comes, but my cock is getting so hard now my balls are beginning to ache. The man I was trying to be would dutifully get her off before taking what he wanted, but that man is a dim shadow far back in my mind. So I grab her wrist with my free hand and guide her to the front of my jeans. She bites her lip again, looking unsure, but when her fingers press against my cock, she lets out another moaning noise. “Oh,” she says, rubbing up and down as I finger her. “You’re big. You’re really big.”

  “And you’re tight and sexy,” I tell her. “You’re…fuck this.”

  I can’t help myself anymore. Maybe I’m letting the animal out. Maybe the animal which was Hound for a large part of my life, ever since I started the game when I was a teenager, isn’t so easily ignored. I remove my hand from her and start tearing at her clothes. She lets out a squeal, but after a second she’s doing the same to my clothes, unbuckling my belt and tugging at my jeans. I yank her Lady Shack top over her head, revealing her bra, and then I’ve unclipped her bra with one hand and her breasts are spilling free. Jesus fucking Christ, if there were ever tits as round and plump and bouncy as these, I haven’t seen them. They’re somehow pointy and round at the same time, and the nipples are large and dark. I lean forward, grabbing one in my hand and sucking the nipples of the other. Her nipples are already hard, but they go harder as I suck and rub.

  “That feels—oh—that feels…” She pulls my jeans and briefs down around my knees. My cock springs up. She’s so much shorter than me that it almost brushes her tits, just from standing here like this. She reaches down and grabs it, sliding pre-come from the tip all the way down to the balls and back again, jerking it fast.

  “I need to fucking be inside of you,” I say, leaning up. “I need to feel that tight fucking pussy.”

  She stares up at me, biting her lip in that way that’s driving me mad, wringing her hands. She looks unsure, but at the same time her chest rises and falls quickly, making her breasts jostle, and one of her hands creeps between her legs, toying with her clit. Unsure, but she wants it, she wants it as badly as I do. She looks around the alleyway, wincing, but when she turns back to me the alleyway seems to disappear. “I want it to,” she says. “I really do. Wow, I really, really do.” Her eyes go wide as she steps forward, pressing her breasts against my chest, squashing them. “Will you fuck me hard?” She shivers as she says it.

  “Does it scare you, thinking about how hard I could fuck you?”

  She nods. “But it excites me, too. Most other men are—well, they’re not men at all, really.”

  I trail my hand up her back, lightly gripping her neck. “I can fuck you harder than you’ve ever been fucked,” I tell her. “But only if you’re ready to take it. Because I won’t be able to stop. Not with a pussy like yours. A pussy as perfect as yours.”

  I love the way she swallows, the way she looks scared, unsure, and yet horny all at once. “Fuck me,” she says.

  Her tights are around her knees, her skirt hiked up around her waist, revealing a perfect place of pleasure: two tight ass cheeks, round and large and bouncy, framing a wet pussy, the lips engorged. I guide her to the wall and push her forward, bending her over, so that she grips the concrete with her fingernails. I spit in my hand and stroke my cock up and down.

  Then I grab her ass cheeks, watc
hing the flesh turn red under my hard grip, and guide my cock to her hole. I’m bigger, way bigger than her hole, so when I first push in she starts moaning and twisting like she wants to get away, but then I push in deeper and I feel a rush of warmth over my dick as she opens up for me. Then she stops twisting and pushes back instead, sliding down the length of me. Hard, she said, and so that’s what I do. I fuck her the hardest I’ve ever fucked anybody. I fuck her so hard I lose all control of myself. I dig my fingers into her flesh and slide in and out, pounding her, my balls swinging against her clit, my cock burying as deep as it can over and over. My eyes are blurry and I’m only vaguely aware of her moaning, or my own grunts. All I know is that hot place between her legs, that hot place which makes my cock throb with heat each time I thrust into it. She squirts onto my cock, once, twice, big thick white liquid that slides up my cock and into her asshole. And that sight drives me even crazier, her squirting like that for me, and now it’s all over her round bouncy ass. I rub the come all over her, and then fuck her harder so that she’ll give me more.