Page 77 of Morally Gray Daddies

“What the fuck are you talking about?” she choked. “Ye… yes, Sir?”

“There you go! Starting right now, you need to learn to use those two words anytime a man tells you to do something. Because if you don’t…”

I dropped my hand from her chin and let it come down to cup her breast.

It was full, heavy and warm beneath the thin cotton of her scraggly, faded T-shirt. She didn’t have a bra on, and I was surprised when my thumb brushed over her nipple and found it hard. Fear. Fear did different things to different people, and discovering this about Lindsey told me I needed to up my asking price for her.

Value added.

She hadn’t moved as I fondled her, but now as I closed my thumb and forefinger, she twisted to get away from the grip I had on her bud, pain smearing her face.

“Fuck!” she cried, trying to jerk away. Her back was against the wall, though, and there was no place to flee from the torture I was inflicting. “Please stop,” she begged. “Please stop, oh god, please stop!”

“Please stop… what?” I waited patiently, neither releasing the tension nor increasing it.

And I was rewarded. “Please stop… Sir.”

I let go immediately. “That’s it! Good girl, Lindsey. Good girl.” I brought my hand up to cradle her cheek. “See how easy that was?”

And I was rewarded again by a tiny smile that barely touched the corners of her mouth but might as well have filled her entire face.

“Listen,” I continued, caressing through the wetness that stained her skin. “If you cooperate, play your cards right, I’m telling you, there’s absolutely nothing you need to be afraid of.”

Her throat worked as she swallowed. “How can you say that? You… You’re kidnapping me.”

“You’re right, I am.” I brushed my thumb to wipe away a fresh tear. “But you need to stop thinking of it in terms of it being a bad thing, like what’s happened to you in the past. This isn’t going to be anything like the first time your mother let a man fuck you for an eightball she couldn’t afford. This isn’t going to end with you in a place like where we’re at right now. What I need you to do is think like the intelligent girl I know you are. The one that drug addict boyfriend of yours wouldn’t recognize even if he was stone-cold sober. The young woman I doubt anyone else has ever recognized but me.”

“You think I’m smart?” she whispered, searching my face for another of the thousand and one lies she would have been told before. “Me?”

“No. I know you are. I’ve watched you. I’ve learned everything I could about you.” I let my finger trace the line of her jaw. “You, Lindsey, are the sole reason I’m here.”

“But, why?”

“I told you. It’s my job.”

She shook her head. “I don’t understand…”

“Right now, you don’t need to. All you need to do is listen to me. Obey me. And not just me, but the men I’m selling you to. Because if you do, I swear, where you’re going will be the beginning of the best thing that’s ever happened to you in your life.”

“How can you possibly expect me to believe that?” she asked in a soft, pleading tone.

“I already told you. Because you’re smart. Because you know if all I wanted to do was steal money or drugs or fuck you or beat you to settle your ex-boyfriend’s debt, or even… kill you”—I paused for a second to let the words sink in—“I’d have already done it. You know I’m telling the truth, Lindsey. I know you do. Simple as that.”

She held my gaze, eyes pleading, trying to discern whether my words were the kind of bullshit her boyfriend Kyle would feed her, or the truth. “Please don’t do this,” she begged.

It was a request I knew was born from the one thing people fear the most: the unknown.

“Why?” I swept my arm to indicate the room around us. “Would you really rather stay here? In a relationship with a shitbag who’ll pimp you out for a dime bag or less if he’s hurting? Is that what you want, to cling to the desperate hope things will get better until they don’t, and he just abandons you entirely? Is this where you want to be, with zero prospects for your future and nothing but more of this”—I gestured to the den of filth surrounding us—“ahead of you?”

“And letting you sell me… will be better?” she appealed in a choking tone that gave away what she was trying to hide: She knew I was right.

“Yes.”

“That doesn’t make any sense…”

“It will. In time, it will. You’ll see.”

She looked away, clearly not wanting to accept what part of her already had.

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