Page 635 of Flirting with Darkness

“I don’t think they’re worth much, what’s the lowdown life expectancy, 60 years? 55? Less?” She’s quiet at my icy joke of a response, but it could also easily be my place that’s struck her immediately mute. The metal stairs clanged under our shifting weight as we ascended, but my loft is swathed in a hum of warm silence. The windows are triple paned to keep the screeching din of the city out of my life, and the whole place is more opulent than she’s likely ever seen in her life.

I crane my neck to look at her as I walk toward the kitchen area of the open plan main floor, and yeah — I’m right. Total Cinderella moment.

She’s staring, all around. Up the twenty foot ceilings to the stark, black iron-work chandelier, to the giant TV in the far wall, to the gas fireplace…

It’s a sex den. And it looks it. The red leather couches and dark furnishings don’t do much to make it appear otherwise.

I wonder for a moment what she’d look like, sprawled over one, her legs taut and spread while I dive down between them, with my tongue…

That jolt of electricity in my groin jerks me semi-awake again, and I yank the fridge open.

“Water?” I ask her, and she slowly turns to me, lips parted in shock.

“Okay, for real, what the hell do you want with me?” she asks, voice folded down small, as she suddenly realizes how outclassed she is here. “You’re gonna take my kidneys.”

“I’m really not,” I say, pouring her a glass of water. “Drink. I’m not completely altruistic, no, you’ll work for what I’m giving you, but maybe I don’t think it’s okay when family sells you down the river.”

She flinches, and I’m not sure how much of that is that she’s finally believing me that her sister and dad were up to no good, or if the bitterness of my own memories have seeped into my voice. Maybe a bit of both. Oh well.

“Drink, consume, imbibe,” I urge her again. She approaches the marble kitchen island with hesitation, and then picks up the glass, and slowly does as instructed. Her eyes flutter shut, and she pauses, inhaling a big lungful of air.

“Oh my god,” she says, and it hits me.

“You’ve really never been out of lowdown,” I say. Her eyes flick open, and I realize they’re blue. Huh. I hadn’t noticed before.

“The water—”

“Tastes good when it’s clean? Yeah. It’s a shocker,” I say, feeling something in my chest I wanna ignore. Is it, pity? Maybe? Nah. Time to reel her in. “I’ve actually been looking for a new manager for my club, here in uptown. I’ve been watching you at work for awhile—”

If stalking her while she worked the sad little picnic tables outside her family’s squalid ‘bar’ counted as watching, then sure, it wasn’t a lie at all.

“And you know how to handle yourself. And in a way that I like. I need some of that sensibility here.” I gesture to a reinforced iron door opposite the gigantic wall of windows. She follows my movement with her eyes, and frowns.

“I run one of the most exclusive private members’ clubs in the entertainment district,” I say, and her eyebrows track upwards.

“And you want my help running it?” she asks, reasonably suspicious. “Me?”

I grin at her.

“Like I told ya before, these uptown girls don’t have what you have. They don’t have your grit. Your mettle.” I lean forward across the island, and she sets her glass down, most of it gone. I fill it up again, and I can see it on her face.

The realization.

The water is endless up here. Possibilities, the same. She’s not greedy, she’s never dreamt of more, and that much was clear when I told her the truth about her family’s plans to ditch her. But up here, she might actually have a chance to just do that: to dream.

“What have you always wanted?”

“To be happy,” she answers instantly, a child’s response from a woman’s mouth. But I don’t laugh at her. Not now, not when she’s so close to giving me what I want. I’ll have it in a few days, I’m certain.

But first, I’ll have her.

“Don’t we all,” I reply, and then take the two steps to bring me around the island. “Come with me.”

She follows, grubby and awkward and out of place in this minimalistic shrine to hedonism.

My room is up a set of stairs, bordered by an enormous one-way glass window that allows me to see everything in the club below from the sanctity of my own little private space. But she’ll have to have her own living quarters… at least for now.

“This is your room,” I say, opening a side door. The space is small and plain by my standards, but from the way her eyes pop she holds a vastly differing opinion. “Closet’s through there, then the bathroom’s there next to it,” I tell her as I motion with my hand, casually, like none of what’s happening is any kind of big deal.

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