Page 3 of Skin
“Did you sayno?” the larger man asks her.
The girl says nothing. She looks at nothing.
“This is not acceptable,” the younger man says. He’s about to pitch a fit like a frat boy with a whiskey dick who can’t get it up for the doll with painted lips who has fallen into his bed.
Walking into a room like this, I’m used to every eye snapping to me. Women looking at my ring finger to see if I have that tell-tale band around it. Men sizing me up, puffing out their chests like the alphas they want to be, fated to be the best, as though they have no control over themselves.
But not now. I hover in the doorway.
A man my size and my age, and I think I’ve seen him around somewhere but I don’t know where, and he’s talking in a hushed but frenetic voice to the man with the red, ruddy, round cheeks who’s hovering in front of a darkened room, the door cracked behind him, but letting no light out.
And then there’s the girl.
They’re discussing her, and only a blade the size of the moon could slice the tension in the room. Her long brown hair is pulled into a tight chignon at the base of her skull. Her skin is likefucking porcelain. And her long neck is elegant and pure, like that of a dancer’s and I harden to fuckingsteelat the thought of my thumb tracing a line from behind her ear down her throat like the sick fuck that I am.
Her eyes flicker up to mine.Carefully. The room is dim, just at the edge of too dark, and her eyes flash to mine and the corner of her mouth pricks up.
The two men may be discussing her without considering whatshewants to say, but their eyes are on her. And when she looks at me, their eyes follow her line of vision and they look at me, too.
The larger man sizes me up in an instant and in one movement crosses the floor and takes the young brunette by the arm.
“You’re a distraction,” he says, tossing her down the dark hallway to his left. He turns his attention back to the younger man. I don’t make a move, because I don’t want to draw anyunwantedattention to myself, butgod helpthe next man who touches her like that. “She won’t be a problem again. Your appointment will be comped. I can book another room for you right now.”
His tone edges toward combustion, frantic energy coiling up inside it with each word. He’s about to explode.
There’s a young blonde girl at the front desk. Younger than the girl who has been tossed down the hallway, discarded, made to be out of sight. She’s twenty, maybe. Maybe.
“Sir,” she says cheerfully. Her expression does not match her tone. Her tone doesn’t match her words. “May I ask if you have an appointment?”
She slinks out from behind the desk as the young man and the large man disappear behind the door the large man hovered near. He is the owner, clearly, or maybe just the man who runs shit for the owner, and he wants to make sure he has another happy customer.
She begins to walk behind me, her eyes on mine, and I instinctively shrug my overcoat off my shoulders. She takes it gracefully and walks over to a hidden coat closet.
I’ve still said nothing. The other two men are speaking loudly behind the closed door; I can hear their shouts as though they’re whispers.
And my mind is on the brunette.
The blonde girl with the sharp features and the big brown eyes waves her hand to a long, low-slung grey couch against the left wall. I sit and another woman comes over with a short glass of something warm and brown.
The door behind the front desk opens and the younger man strides out of the place, hunched over slightly, muttering under his breath.
The larger man waits a beat and comes out of the office and walks down the dark hallway.
My gut lurches. My body follows my gut. I stand, and I begin to follow the man.
I turn the corner after the man and we both see the woman at the same time. The lights back here are brighter, but she glowed even in the darkness.
Her eyes take him in first, and then glide past him to me. I steady my jaw and tip my chin down, silently telling her to not say anything. Her boss is seething with blind rage, and I don’t want to startle him.
“Did you say no?” he repeats again, walking toward her slowly.
“I didn’t sayanything,” she snaps, but her body softens under the words as she completes them. Her eyes flicker to mine and back to her boss’.
Good girl.
“I’m sorry. There was a misunderstanding.”
“You know I took a chance on you,” he says, stepping closer to her. “And you know I have to let you go. We can’t afford to have the customers leave unsatisfied.”
